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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS