Cable Thieves Jailed 14 Years

Two persons who stole 75 metres of cables belonging to Vodafone Ghana Limited, have been sentenced to a total of 14 years imprisonment by the Accra Circuit Court. The convicts, Jibril Kassim and Nsor Alfred, both aged 31, pleaded guilty to charges of causing unlawful damage, unlawful entry and stealing and will spend seven years each behind bars. After pleading guilty, the convicts, with teary eyes, pleaded for mercy before the court presided over by Mr Francis Obiri. Sentence Passing sentence, Mr Obiri said the court had taken into consideration the fact that the convicts were first offenders, did not waste the court�s time and were both married with children. He said: �Your instincts should have guided you not to have gone back to the Vodafone warehouse to steal, especially when you were caught by someone in the morning. �Stealing of Vodafone cables is on the increase and that causes the company in its ability to provide quality services to its customers. Your sentence will serve as a deterrent to others,� he added. Facts The prosecution, Chief Inspector of Police Jubiok Micheals, had told the court that at about 2 a.m. on June 28, 2014, a witness spotted Kassim and Alfred folding some cables behind the wall of the Vodafone Ghana Company�s warehouse at Adenta. He said the witness confronted the convicts and they told him that the cables had been given to them by one of the security men at the warehouse. However, the witness, he said, informed the leader of a watch committee who quickly mobilised his men to the scene, but they did not meet the convicts. At about 3 a.m., Mr Micheals said the convicts appeared at the scene in a taxi and started packing the cables into the taxi. The security men at the warehouse then grabbed them and handed them over to the police.