Retired Commissioner of Police (COP), George Alex Mensah, continues to assert his innocence in connection with the leaked audio recording.
In this recording, he and another senior officer were heard discussing a plot to remove the current Inspector-General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare.
COP Mensah maintains that the entire conversation with former Northern Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bugri Naabu, was a private discussion that did not involve any criminal activity.
“Like me and you having a conversation privately in your room or my room, then you secretly record it, you bring it out and, you will not even bring the conversation that we had out; you edited the conversation.
“You doctored it and you brought it out. So I was not afraid of anything because I knew what actually took place and I did not say anything wrong in the tape.
“I was not planning a coup in the tape; neither was I planning to go and sell cocaine or steal. No! all what I said in the tape is the truth and it’s right and as I said at the Committee, if you give me the chance I will say it here, I will say it anywhere,” he told Joy News in an interview on Monday, October 15, 2023.
In the audio, which has now become the focal point of a parliamentary committee’s investigation, COP Mensah and two other police officers are alleged to have been mobilizing political backing for the removal of the IGP.
While advocating for COP Mensah as the ideal candidate to replace Dr. Dampare, these officers portrayed him as a staunch supporter and member of the ruling New Patriotic Party, indicating that he would assist the party in furthering its objectives of retaining power in the 2024 elections.
Moreover, they questioned Dr. Dampare’s competence and accused him of having affiliations with the opposition National Democratic Congress.
When questioned about the apparent partisan nature of his actions, COP Mensah explained that he made these assertions as part of a lobbying strategy.
“Unless somebody doesn’t want to speak the truth, there is no position in this country that people don’t lobby or people don’t hold people’s hands to go and see the appointing authority. So that was not news,” he stated.
He refuted the accusation of plotting the IGP’s removal emphasising that the power to do so did not lie with him or the people captured in the tape.