The voice expert consulted to examine the so-called Kofi Boayke tape, a central piece of evidence in the cocaine trial of Kwabina 'Tagor' Amaning and Alhaji Issah Abbass disappointed the prosecution when he said the CD that has been tendered in evidence was different from the one sent to him to analyse.

The police investigator handling the case had earlier told the court that the CD was the original recording of the conversation meeting that was secretly made at the residence of Assistant Commissioner of Police Kofi Boakye in May last year, and allegedly featured the voices of the senior police official and four others, including the two accused persons.

Forming the thrust of the prosecution case, the recording was sent to voice expert John Peter French for detailed analysis.

According to the voice experts, "The material on the CD is a copy of material which was apparently recorded on an analogue cassette tape. Although the audio track is in stereo format," they explained, "the original cassette recording appears to have been mono (single channel). The material is apparently all from the same side of a tape which, on the basis of technical examinations, is most likely to have been a microcassette."

The forensic phonetics analyses in this case was carried out by the following experts: Prof French, Philip Harrison and Paul Foulkes all of J P French Associates & University of York, UK, and Opanin Kofi Agyekum of Peace FM fame and the University of Ghana.

Giving his evidence, which took  five hours, including breaks, Prof French said, "We were informed that the recording of the meeting on the compact disc listed was to be brought in evidence in a criminal prosecution and it was agreed among the parties to that action that five men had taken part in the conversation, namely: Messrs Kofi Boakye, Alhaji Imoro, Kwabena Acheampong, Alhaji Issah and Kwabena Amaning.

The voices of the five men had also been secretly recorded in custody to enable comparison for speakers" identification exercise.

"The purpose of the comparisons was to enable us to attribute the utterances spoken in the meeting conversation," Prof French explained.

"We were also asked to carry out authenticity examinations of the recording of the meeting, i.e., to examine it for any evidence of its having been tampered with or edited," he told the court.

"We were further requested to consider whether the meeting conversation might have been staged or playacted, rather than being natural conversational speech."

The conversation meeting was conducted in both English and Twi. This necessitated the assistance of Twi speaking linguist. Dr Kofi Agyekum of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ghana attending  the offices of JP French Associates in York, UK for a total of 13 days (from November 6-10, 2006 and December 8-16, 2006) and worked with Prof French and Dr Foulkes on the preparation of the transcript, the court was told.

"Dr Agyekum took ultimate responsibility for the transcription of the Twi sections of the conversation and for their translation into English. He also provided invaluable assistance with the transcription of the distinctly Ghanaian accented English sections, for which he is jointly responsible with Prof French and Dr Foulkes," Prof French said.

It was when he was asked by the prosecution led by Edward Agyemang Boadu, a Senior State Attorney, to identify the CD that he told the court the CD in evidence was not the one he examined, showing to the court an image of the one he received on his lap top.

This prompted the defence to object to Prof French being allowed to speak on the evidence that he was admitting he never examined. But the judge overruled it saying that the expert had also said he could identify the recording by another means, listening to excerpts of it.

On March 22, Detective Inspector Adaba told the court that he secretly recorded Tagor, Abass and the three others without their knowledge. He had explained that he took the decision after a voice expert in the UK, requested voice samples of all five persons at the conversational meeting at Kofi Boakye’s house.

Prof French, who is also a forensic expert, has testified in over 200 cases in the court including the Milosevic war tribunal in The Hague, told the court that he can identify the tape by its physical features and also its contents. But upon comparing the physical features of the tape, which is in evidence before the court, with the one he had on his laptop computer he told the court that the two were not the same.

He explained that the physical features including the markings on the tape and its capacity were all different. He said the one he worked on has K’B marked in a green colour on it and has the capacity of 700MB and not 650MB as indicated on the one in evidence. He said because of these discrepancies, he can only identify it by its content.

Prof French told the court that the voices on the ACP Kofi Boakye tape were those of the five people, including the two accused. He went further to testify that the CD had not been edited or altered. He went on to say that the participants were not playacting at the meeting and that it was of a natural conversational speech.

The trial continues today, with the defence giving notice that they are likely to request for a replay of aspects of the tape.