I REFUSED TO CHANGE MY STATEMENT- SAILOR

A SAILOR who is being tried alongside four others in connection with MV Benjamin, the vessel alleged to have carted 77 parcels of cocaine in the country, on Wednesday said that a police investigator asked him to change his statement and write a new one to incriminate the two foreigners involved but he refused.
The sailor, Isaac Arhin, told the Accra Fast Track High Court that he refused and informed Inspector Charles Adabah, the investigator, that he had already given his statement to the police but asked James Inkoom, an accomplice who later became a prosecution witness whether he (Inkoom) had changed his statement to the police, to which Inkoom replied no.
Isaac was concluding his evidence in-chief in the case in which he, his brother, Philip Bruce Arhin, Joseph Kojo Dawson, the owner of the vessel, and Cui Xian Li and Luo Yin Xing, both Chinese, have been accused of playing various roles in the importation of the cocaine.
The accused persons have been charged with various counts of using property for narcotic offences, engaging in prohibited business relating to narcotics and possession of narcotic drugs without lawful authority.
Each of them has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and has been remanded in prison custody.
Led in evidence by his counsel, Mr Osei Wusu, Isaac told the court that they were on remand at the James Fort prison and four days after coming to court, they were taken to the Police CID Headquarters where the investigator called him to come and change his statement to the police to incriminate the whitemen.
He said after that Inkoom was dropped as an accomplice and never taken to court again.
When Mrs Stella Badu, a state attorney crossed-examined Isaac, he said that he had been a sailor for 20 years but had worked with MV Benjamin for only three years from 2002 to 2005.
According to him, he did not know Yin Xing, one of the Chinese but knew all the other accused persons and that Yin Xing came to the vessel a day before it took off to the high seas to ask for food from Xian Li who was his friend.
He described as false the assertion that Inkoom was not working on the vessel at the time it was arrested and according to him, after Inkoom had gone for the funeral of his late wife he came back two months later.
Isaac said that he filled the vessel’s movement card but denied that he knew the destination of the vessel because he was made to understand that it was going for a trial on the high seas.
He further denied that Commander Yakubu of the Ghana Navy spoke to their vessel before it w as arrested because the instrument on which the Commander allegedly spoke to them did not exist on the vessel, therefore, it was impossible to have communicated with them