The trial of two persons accused of murdering former Ashanti Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Samuel Ennin, is to go before the criminal assizes in February, this year. It would be the third time the two accused persons, Kwame Ayew and Sherif Kabore, who are already serving long prison terms over other cases, would go before the criminal assizes. A State Attorney at the Attorney General’s (AG’s) office in Kumasi, Mr R Osei-Hwere, told the Daily Graphic “this time we hope to make a head-way in completing the case.” In the previous two attempts, the trial did not travel the full length because of what the AG’s office described as” certain difficulties.” Under the country’s criminal jurisprudence, that meant the trial had to be truncated and restart all over again. “By the laws of the land, failure to complete a case in assizes period means the case will have to start all over again,” the state attorney said. This is so because new jurors had to be appointed every year to sit on cases listed for the assizes. Mr Osei-Hwere explained that the previous trials could not go the full length because of the absence of certain key prosecution witnesses. About four years ago, the GJA honoured its promise to give the police GH¢1,000 if they were able to apprehend the perpetrators of the heinous crime. The slain former Ashanti Regional GJA chairman, who was also the News Editor of Ashh FM in Kumasi, was sitting over drinks with some colleagues at Liberal Spot, a drinking joint in Kumasi on the night of February 9, 2007, when two armed men stormed the place and shot him in the midsection and the neck. The gunmen, who were using a VW Jetta saloon car with registration number AS 5598 W, arrived at the spot firing indiscriminately. According to eyewitnesses, the gunmen also took away mobile phone from their victims. In April 2007, the police paraded Sheriff Kabore and Kwame Ayew, in front of journalists in Kumasi and claimed they were the killers of Ennin. Police however said in their investigations that the murder was purely connected to robbery. Meanwhile, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the GJA, Nana Yaw Osei, has expressed disappointment about the way the case had been handled. “I am tempted to believe that the police did not do thorough investigations into the issue and perhaps the GJA rushed in parting the GH¢1,000 to them.