{"id":204546,"date":"2016-04-05T18:10:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T18:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=204546"},"modified":"2016-04-05T18:10:25","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T18:10:25","slug":"ras-mubarak-slams-11-year-sentence-for-wee-drink-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=204546","title":{"rendered":"Ras Mubarak criticizes 11-year sentence for &#8216;wee drink&#8217; mother"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>National Coordinator of the National Youth Authority (NYA) Ras Mubarak, says the 11-year sentence given to a mother of nine for selling alcohol mixed with Indian hemp is extremely harsh.<\/p>\n<p>An Accra Circuit Court last Wednesday sentenced Ama Forson to 11\u00a0years in prison with hard labour, a ruling that has been widely condemned.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_204554\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-204554\" style=\"width: 470px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-204554 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Wee-Mother-1.jpg\" alt=\"Wee-Mother\" width=\"470\" height=\"268\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-204554\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ama Forson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ras Mubarak\u00a0explained that although he is not against punishing lawbreakers, \u00a0lawmakers need to review sentences that have the potential to destroy lives and overburden the state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to look at sentencing regimes in the country and look at how people can still make people pay for their punishments without necessarily destroying their lives&#8230; and secondly also overburdening the state of cost of keeping them in prisons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fact that\u00a0Ama Forson is a mother of nine must also be taken into consideration according to the\u00a0NYA National Coordinator.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMine was hinged on humanitarian grounds because she is a woman and a mother secondly. I felt that being a way in prison for the number of years that she was given might not be in the interest of the children that she has.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ras Mubarak also welcomed the decision by the Ministry of Gender Childern and Social Protection to intervene in the case.<\/p>\n<p>The Minister of Gender and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur in a statement on Monday, announced\u00a0her outfit is liaising with the Attorney General\u2019s Department to assess the circumstances of the case and provide support including legal services.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Facts of the case<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The facts of the case were that, on September 29, 2015, the New Weija Police arrested the convict in a swoop at Bortianor in the Ga Central Municipality.<\/p>\n<p>The police, during their search on her premises, retrieved quantities of dried leaves suspected to be Indian hemp from her black ladies\u2019 handbag.<\/p>\n<p>The search also revealed a wine bottle containing dried leaves suspected to be Indian hemp and liquid.<\/p>\n<p>The sentence has been widely criticized as highhanded for the offense in question particularly when the convict has nine children to be catered for.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Coordinator of the National Youth Authority (NYA) Ras Mubarak, says the 11-year sentence given to a mother of nine for selling alcohol mixed with Indian hemp is extremely harsh. An Accra Circuit Court last Wednesday sentenced Ama Forson to 11\u00a0years in prison with hard labour, a ruling that has been widely condemned. Ras Mubarak\u00a0explained [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}