The 20-year-old Prisoner Awaiting Execution Or Pardon

Zaria Sulemana, a twenty-year-old is at the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons after being granted capital punishment for murdering her friend.

She is among six (6) out of the one hundred and fifty-eight (158) prisoners on the death roll at that particular prison, according to JoyNews.

In a report filed by JoyNews, Zaria recollected the incident that earned her a bed at the Nsawam Medium Prison.

It was in April 2014, when her friend called her to her home for a chat and the conversation suddenly erupted into an argument.

“I quarrelled with my friend and she stabbed me multiple times in my back and arm and my interdigital folds fingers. When I realised it was a knife she had stabbed me with, I managed to get it from her and stabbed her too. We were all taken to the hospital and she died the next day”, she recounted in an interview with joyNews.

When the incident happened, Zaria was 12 years old.

JoyNews reports that the autopsy report showed that the victim was stabbed in the left side of her upper rib creating a wound deep enough that it damaged other organs in her body and resulted in her death.

Zaria revealed the greatest fear she has been struggling to come to terms with is the fact that she can be executed anytime the government gives an order.

“I’m worried about where I am now and the name carved for me because if the government gives an order to execute people on death sentence, I will be part”, she told the JoyNews reporter in an interview.

The only hope for her freedom from the shackles of prison and death could be the Prerogative of Mercy.

This means the president of Ghana can grant her pardon for the offence.

Whether Zaria will be executed or be set free, depends on the government.

The last execution in Ghana was carried out in 1993 according to pgaction.com.

PGA, an NGO which is into peace, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and gender equality says that 12 people were sentenced to death in 2018 and 172 individuals remain on death row in the country.

“While Ghana has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 2000, it has yet to ratify its Second Optional Protocol aiming at the abolition of the death penalty (ICCPR-OP2)”, it said.

Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini