Cocaine: Kantanka jailed 10 yrs

June 17, 2010 (Page 3)
THE Accra Fast Track High Court on June 16, 2010 sentenced a music producer to 10 years imprisonment with hard labour for attempting to export 1.162 kilogrammes of cocaine to the United Kingdom.
Samuel Sarfo Kantanka, 56, was convicted on his own plea after he had confessed to swallowing 96 pellets of cocaine.
The Presiding Judge, Mr Justice Quist, also ordered the police to destroy the cocaine in the presence of officials from the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), the Ghana Standards Board (GSB), the prosecution and the registrar of the court.
Kantanka was convicted on two counts of possessing narcotic drugs without lawful authority and attempting to export narcotic drugs without licence.
Before his conviction, Kantanka aka Manga pleaded guilty to the two counts and stated that he did not want to waste the court’s time and for that reason he should be convicted.
The convict then prayed the court to tamper justice with mercy after the prosecutor in the case, Mr Asiamah Sampong, a Principal State Attorney, told the court that results from the Ghana Standards Board (GSB) revealed that the substances Kantanka swallowed tested positive for cocaine.
The court convicted him on his own plea and directed that Kantanka’s sentence should begin from the day of his arrest.
Kantanka looked indifferent after he was sentenced. He chatted happily with other inmates while being escorted into a waiting vehicle to serve his term in prison.
The convict was on Tuesday, April 30, 2010 arrested by officials of NACOB at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) while undergoing departure formalities.
He was taken through a body scanner which revealed that there were foreign materials in his stomach.
Urine test confirmed that the convict had ingested narcotic substances.
Kantanka told interrogators that a man named Stone gave him the drugs at a guest house at Ashongman to be given to a Ghanaian only identified as Obroni.
He, however, led NACOB officials on a wild goose chase to locate the said Stone’s house afte r he had told officials he knew the house.