The display of bravery and heroism by a senior policewoman in rescuing and bringing back to Ghana a nine-year-old boy abducted to Nigeria has earned her an international award. The US State Department named DSP Patience Quaye among eight persons selected world-wide as "Heroes and Heroines Acting to End Modern-day Slavery". This was contained in the June 2007 release of the Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report. According to the report, the extraordinary efforts of DSP Quaye (nee Boi-Bi-Boi), who pursued and helped to prosecute a man, Razak Mohammed, who abducted and sold his stepson to strangers in Nigeria, enforced a new law in Ghana to combat human trafficking. The report said in December 2005, one Razak Mohammed asked his wife, Joyce Kruwaa, to allow his stepson, Kwadwo Kwafo, aged nine, to accompany him to visit his parents at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region. She gave her consent because that had been the usual practice whereby every December, Mohammed went to his parents for items for the Christmas celebration. The report said this time around, instead of going to Kintampo, Mohammed took the boy to Kano, Nigeria, and sold him to an Alhaji for 158,000 naira (about $1,000). The report said DSP Quaye, who is also the Deputy Director of Interpol, Ghana, led a team from Ghana to Abuja, Nigeria, where the abducted boy was found in the custody of the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficked Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP). The team brought the boy back to Ghana on June 7, 2006 and handed him over to his mother, Joyce Kruwaa. After negotiation with the NAPTIP through the Ghana High Commission in Abuja, Mohammed was handed over to Interpol Ghana on February 16, 2007. On February 20, 2007, Mohammed was arraigned, tried, convicted and sentenced to six years in jail with hard labour. Presenting the award to her at an impressive ceremony at the American Embassy in Accra, Mrs Pamela E. Bridgwater, the American Ambassador to Ghana, said Mrs Quaye was selected because of her personal commitment and accomplishments and this was a credit to Ghana and its effort to combat trafficking in the country. She explained that all American embassies in the world were asked to nominate one person who had made a significant contribution in combating trafficking in persons and DSP Quaye was selected for her efforts in returning the child to his mother and helping to prosecute the abductor. She said the sentence of the trafficker made it the first successful prosecution of a human trafficking case in Ghana since the passage of the Human Trafficking Law in 2005. The Ambassador said all this was accomplished at a time the Human Trafficking Board, a body that is mandated by the Trafficking Law to regulate and oversee prosecution, had not been set up. "Her achievement was truly inspiring and I am so pleased that she was getting international recognition from the State Department," Mrs Bridgewater said. For her part, DSP Quaye said human trafficking and smuggling of migrants constituted a global disease which posed a great challenge to Ghana, the ECOWAS sub-region and the international community as a whole. She, therefore, called for a multi-faceted approach to combating the menace. According to her, the Interpol Human Trafficking Desk in Ghana was opened barely three years ago as a result of a resolution passed during an Interpol conference held in Lyon, France. DSP Quaye said the desk had handled a lot of cases both internally and externally but one outstanding case which brought great success to the unit and smiles on the faces of Ghanaians was the Razak Mohammed case. Source: The Mirror