A New Twist To The Anlo Murders

The surreptitious disappearance of the cadavers of those shot at and killed in the Anlo chieftaincy dispute , as well as the man who died in police custody has provoked an investigation into the whereabouts of the bodies.

In a press release yesterday, the Anlo Youth pointed out clearly that in matters of the sort, one would have expected that all the parties to the dispute are invited or are present before the bodies of the deceased are removed for any examination to determine the cause of death. This is in order to clear any apparent foreseen doubts that may result in a postmortem thereafter. But contrary to this procedure, the police, without informing the families of the murdered persons, the hospital administrators, the medical doctor in-charge of the Keta and Ho government hospitals, went to the morgues of the respective hospital and removed the bodies to unknown destinations.

In an interview with the Police Commissioner in-charge of the CID unit, Mr. Apeatu, following a press release by the Anlo Youth earlier in the day, he told Joy News (6 o’clock news 22/11/2007) that the bodies of the deceased were deposited at the Police hospital for postmortem to be conducted on them to determine their cause of death. He further intimated that the removal of the bodies from the morgues was known to Mr. Raymond Okudzeto and the families of the deceased.

In another interview concerning the same issue, the Keta District Chief Executive, Mr. Edward Kofi Ahiabor, told Radio GRA (6 o’clock News) that the bodies of the deceased were deposited at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra for postmortem. Pressed further if he and the Regional Minister, Kofi Dzameshie, knew anything about the removal of the bodies, he responded in the affirmative.

But in an interview with the publicist of the bereaved families, Mr. Washington Ahadzi, he maintained that none of them was informed about the removal of the bodies of their beloved fallen ones before their removal from the morgues. He cautioned: ‘if there are individuals who, in spite of the pain the families are going through, would like to score some political goals with their misfortune, those individuals should think well before they leap’.

A senior police officer this writer spoke to, on condition of anonymity, on the current state of affairs with regards to the missing bodies declared that: ‘since the cause of the death is still unknown, the results of the postmortem may be pre-emptive and may jeopardize investigations, especially when the deaths are believed to have been caused by the police shooting into the unarmed civilians, and the police are also having a different position on the matter’.

To him the current state of events leave a lot of questions unanswered: first, would the results of the postmortem be acceptable to all the parties in this tussle, considering the issues surrounding the missing bodies? Second, is Mr. Raymond Okudzeto a family member of any of the deceased and is it true that he is in the known of the removals? And finally, why did they not allow an independent body to take up the investigative aspect of the murders to prove their nonaligned status? He concluded: ‘the Police Chief and the District Chief Executive of Keta would have a difficult task reconciling their contradictory interviews, especially when public perception points to government complicity’.