Investigation into alleged plot to remove IGP: It’s doctored tape …COP Alex Mensah insists, says ‘we didn’t discuss removal of IGP’

The Commissioner of Police (COP), George Alex Mensah, has said the leaked audio recording in which he was heard allegedly plotting the removal of the Inspector-Gener­al of Police, Dr George Akuffo Dampare, with a former Northern Regional Chairman of the NPP, Chief Bugri Naabu and another police officer is “doctored.”

COP Mensah admitted that he has on four occasions held meet­ings with Chief Bugri Naabu but never did they discuss the removal of the IGP.

Appearing before the sev­en-member parliamentary com­mittee probing the leaked tape on which the removal of the IGP was being hatched, COP Mensah said the tape does not represent “wholly” their conversation.

“What I admit is true that I had a meeting with Bugri Naabu but we didn’t have any plan to remove the IGP because I don’t remove the IGP and I don’t appoint the IGP.

“The audio that I listened to is the edited version of the conver­sation that we had and because of that, wholly, this audio is not genuine. I hear a voice that rep­resents my voice but I can’t accept everything in the conversation,” he told the committee in Accra yesterday.

“It is a doctored tape. All I can tell you is that the tape I heard today is edited. I identify some voices that resemble my voice but I cannot say specifically that is my voice.

“Chair, this tape that was played to me today is an edited tape. There are so many things on the tape that I don’t remember and there are certain things that I re­member we discussed but are not on the tape,” he added.

Pushed to speak to aspects of the over one hour tape which are genuine, COP Mensah said “Mr Chairman, if I say I can repro­duce from the first to last minute what is genuine and what is not genuine, then I’ll be lying.”

Speaking to the specifics, COP Mensah said he did say that elections are sometimes won by means and ways but clarified that “during elections if you don’t provide the needed security for people to come out and vote peacefully, and you allow people to come and disturb, snatch ballot boxes at your strongholds, then you are ending in opposition. That is what I meant.”

Asked if he did say that the ‘IGP is not correct’ on the tape, COP said “I will not deny that fact today, tomorrow or the next day. I’ll make that statement again. The IGP is not managing the police service well. It is something I’ll not run away from and I’ll say it everywhere and anywhere I go.”

His reason for saying that, he clarified was because majority of police officers were not happy and if this same people were to police the polls, the governing party would end in opposition.

He described himself as a poli­tician who was having a conversa­tion with a political figure.

Meanwhile, Superintendent Em­manuel Gyebi, who Chief Bugri Naabu said was to escort him to the president where the idea of removing the IGP would be sold to the president, has denied ever engaged in any such arrangement.

“It is a palpable lie. I don’t know him, I don’t have his number, so would I know it was Chief Bugri Naabu, I was speaking to?” he asked.

He narrated that, he missed several calls whilst on a family engagement in Koforidua and remembers answering one of the calls and telling the person, he was not in Accra but could not con­firm if it was Chief Bugri Naabu.