James Agalga, the Ranking Member of Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee, has justified the decision of the Committee, the Defence Minister, and the Military High Command to visit Ashaiman on Thursday, March 16, instead of going there immediately.

A section of the public has questioned the date, believing that these institutions should immediately check in with Ashaiman residents to interrogate and gather first-hand information on what happened.

According to James Agalga, who spoke to Citi News, the timeframe is to allow ongoing investigations to come to a reasonable conclusion.

“The Committee took the decision not to visit the scene at the time the Police and the GAF are in the community over the alleged killing and brutalities. The place is currently a crime scene, and some investigations are ongoing. If the committee is to proceed there, we stand to compromise the outcome, so we all agreed that we will wait till Thursday because by then, preliminary investigations would have been concluded.”

Some soldiers were reported to have beaten some residents of Ashaiman on Tuesday after a soldier was killed in the area.

Specifically, the military personnel invaded Ashaiman-Taifa and Tulaku on the dawn of March 7 in an attempt to arrest persons suspected of murdering a young military officer, Trooper Imoro Sherrif and ended up brutalizing people in the area and also arrested 184 persons, 150 of whom have been released as of March 9.

“We will visit the deceased soldier’s family and also the victims who were brutalized”, James Agalga said.

Speaking to journalists in Parliament, the Chairman of the Defence and Interior Committee, Ken Agyepong extended the condolence of the Committee to the family of the murdered soldier and also to the innocent people that were caught in the actions of the military.

“We met…in a closed-door meeting with the Ministry of Defence and the Military High Command, and we have agreed that we will visit Ashaiman on Thursday [March 16] to dialogue with the people as well as the Military High Command and in the meantime, we pleaded with the Member of Parliament for Ashaiman to stay calm, and we sympathize with him and the family of the victim and also to those innocent people that were caught up.”