Notorious armed robber, Aryee Aryeetey, alias Ataa Ayi, has told an Accra High Court that he detests robbery and that he has never engaged in any armed robbery in his life. "In my life what l have never done is armed robbery and for them to say that I have been engaging in armed robbery with others is false," he said, and added that what he told the court was the gospel truth. Ayi, who said his full name was Raymond Aryee Aryeetey, was concluding his evidence in one of the string of cases involving him and other accomplices at the High Court on Friday. . He is serving a 70-year sentence after being convicted in 2006 and facing two counts of conspiracy and robbery for raiding the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) at gunpoint on May 19, 2004 with three others, namely, Sarfo Sarpong, Michael Tagoe and Nana Osei, aka Razak. The facts of the case were that the chief cashier of the CAC and two other employees of the church went to cash GH¢5,625 from the Standard Chartered Bank, Osu Branch and were driving to the office when the accused persons chased them amidst gunshots to the premises but.the complainants managed to run away with the money. While looking for the chief cashier and the others, the accused persons chanced on some officials of the church counting some money in another room and robbed them of GH¢662 at gunpoint. The accused persons had denied the offence. Responding to a question by the State Attomey, Mrs Rebecca Adjalo, that some prosecution witnesses saw him wearing a cap, Ayi retorted thus, "What 1 hate in my life is a cap. Nobody saw me wearing a cap on the day of the incident. 1 don't know them and 1 have never met anybody". He said on the day of the incident, he was at Bolgatanga attending the funeral of his wife's mother, Hajia Meli. "1 went to Bolga on about April 10, 2004 and 1 was there for more than one month so how could it be possible for me to be present in Accra to rob somebody?" he queried. According to Ayi, he did not know his alleged accomplices, apart from Razak with whom he was arraigned at the Accra Fast Track High Court on a similar charge. He said he was at home at Teshie on February 28, 2005 when the police came to arrest him that he was Ataa Ayi, a name he said he denied. The accused person said after his arrest, he was forced to append his signature to a statement written by the police and later taken to an identification parade during which nobody identified him as having robbed him or her. "I am not a robber otherwise people would have come out to identify me," he said, and maintained that he was not the Ataa Ayi that the police claimed to have arrested because a picture published in the newspapers of the said Ataa Ayi and was made available to the Fast Track High Court by his earlier counsel was not his but the court ignored him. The court has fixed next Tuesday for its judgement. Meanwhile, another fresh case involving Ayi was called by the prosecution. After his conviction, Ayi has been shuttling from the Nsawam Prisons to the courts, where a string of armed robbery cases in which he has been named are pending. Source: Daily Graphic