FIFA corruption journalist Ahmed Husein shot dead in Ghana capital

Ahmed Husein was part of a team led by award-winning journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, whose undercover probe into corruption led to the resignation of FIFA’s head of the Ghana Football Association.

On Wednesday, the 34-year-old was shot in the neck and the chest by unknown gunmen on his way home at night in the capital Accra, police said.

The reporter, whose other exposes have lifted the lid on graft in the judicial system, is well known for wearing hats and face-coverings to conceal his identity.

Death threats were nothing new to him. Yet he persisted in his investigations.

Football’s world governing body FIFA last October banned former Ghana FA boss Kwesi Nyantakyi for life and fined him $700,000 after he was caught on camera accepting bribes. Nyantakyi was accused of requesting $15 million to secure government contracts.

Husein was a key part of a group of investigators responsible for the life-bans of eight referees and assistant referees and a further 53 officials who were subject to 10-year bans. Fourteen officials were exonerated.

Dozens of football referees and officials in several countries were also banned, including Nigerian national team coach Salisu Yusuf, for receiving cash from undercover journalists posing as agents.

The revelations rocked Ghana, a country where football is the national sport and which prides itself as a stable democracy in an often turbulent region.

“Our men are on the ground currently gathering information,” said the director of the criminal investigations department, Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Dankwa

“Everyone connected to this murder will be invited for questioning,” he told AFP.

DEATH THREATS
Ghanaian journalists condemned the killing of the 34-year-old reporter, who played a key role in last year’s investigation.

Husein had previously made a complaint to police after a Ghanaian politician, Kennedy Agyapong, showed his photograph on a private television channel.

He promised payment for supporters who took retribution against Husein.

“That boy that’s very dangerous, he lives here in Madina. If he comes here, beat him,” he said, pointing to Husein’s image.

In the undercover investigation into football corruption, Agyapong’s name was mentioned by implicated sporting officials.

Husein’s lawyer, Kissi Agyabeng, said the member of parliament had questions to answer.

“He invited the world to beat him up and said he will pay for it and now he has been killed,” he said.

“How can you put pictures of someone out there and splash it on national TV and ask people to go after his life for a reward? In law this is abetment of crime.”

He has also faced threats from Agyapong, who belongs to President Nana Akufo-Addo’s ruling New Patriotic Party.

The Committee for the Protection of Journalists called for an immediate investigation and for Ghanaian authorities to “ensure that threats against the press are taken seriously.”

RSF has previously condemned threats against Anas himself after he revealed “threatening calls, intimidatory messages and suspicious vehicles near his home.”

Ghana’s national media regulator condemned the killing.

“It will be in the national interest to arrest the perpetrators of this crime,” the commission’s chairman Yaw Boadu Ayeboafo said in a statement.