Two British teenage girls were sentenced on Wednesday to nine months for trying to smuggle cocaine out of Ghana in laptop bags, government officials said.
Ghana narcotics board spokesman Francis Opoku-Amoah said the sentences include time already served, meaning the girls will be released on April 18. They had been facing up to three years in jail.
The two 16-year-old students from London were convicted in November of possession and trafficking of narcotic drugs after being arrested at the Accra airport in July with about 5.8kg of cocaine in their computer cases.
"The girls get a second chance not to repeat what they did," Opoku-Amoah told reporters on exiting the courthouse. "The message is clear to everybody. Once you do it and get caught you will pay for it."
He said they will serve the remainder of their sentences at a juvenile detention center in the capital, Accra. It was not clear if this was the same facility they had been held in since their arrest.
Asked if the girls might be sent home to England to serve out their time, a British High Commission spokesman said such a move would not make sense.
"The crime was committed here, the trial was held here, and that's it," Gary Nicholls said.
The head of the girls' legal team had previously said they planned to appeal the conviction. The girls lawyers could not be immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Officials have said the two were recruited in London by drug traffickers who promised them an all-expenses-paid vacation in Ghana in return for serving as drug couriers. The teens reportedly left for Africa telling their parents they were going to France.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
RSS