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LIBYA. TWO GHANAIANS EXCUTED FOR MURDER
February 16, 2008: two Ghanaian nationals and a Gambian were executed by firing squad at the Kofiya Rehabilitation Facility in Benghazi, after pleas for clemency and Ghanaian President John Agyekum Kufuor’s last-minute intervention for a stay of execution were turned down. Kojo Blankson was convicted and sentenced to death in May 1998 for the murder of a Libyan. An Algerian, convicted for the murder of the same Libyan had already been executed, according to a family spokesperson and a member of the International Correctional and Prisons Association, Michael Ampadu Jnr. Samuel Ayi Ayitey was convicted, together with the Gambian, and sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of a Senegalese. “Even before the fatal bullets hit him, he was said to have uttered the words ‘I don’t know anything,” a family source quoted a Ghana Embassy official as saying. Before his execution, Kojo Blankson conversed with his aged mother, sister and daughter in what he described as his last chat with them. In a statement to Parliament on February 22, the Ghanaian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD, Akwasi Osei-Adjei, confirmed the execution of the four Ghanaians in Libya. Osei-Adjei stated that although efforts were made by the government to secure a reprieve for the four Ghanaians, “these proved unsuccessful”. (Sources: Daily Graphic, 22/01/2008; Ghana Today, 18/02/2008, Ghana News Today, 16/02/2008)
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