Castle wrote judgment for Afreh - Sipa Yankey

Dr. George Sipa Yankey, former director at the Finance and Economic Planning Ministry, and also former President of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development says the judgement that sent him to prison over his alleged involvement in the Quality Grain investment losses to the State was written from the Castle, Osu, and never by the trial judge.

George Yankey, spokesman on Trade and Industry for the National Democratic Congress, was on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Tuesday morning and told host Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, that the late Justice Dixon Kwame Afreh, who tried him and others for willfully causing financial loss to the State, never wrote the ‘red inked’ judgement but it was given him at the Castle when on the day of delivering his judgement, he was summoned there.

He said the judgement was written by three people; two senior officials at the Attorney-General’s Office and a senior judge of the superior courts. He would not identify them by names.

The former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gateway Programme said the ruling New Patriotic Party government has been so vindictive and set out to humiliate its opponents, especially those in the NDC, and unfortunately, the ‘wickedness’ has now been extended to its own members, citing the case of Alan Kyerematen and former National Security Minister, Francis Poku.

But the man, who started his radio programme with a prayer because he is a 'practising born again', said he has forgiven all who had a hand in his imprisonment, and so has he been praying for all who hated him, including President J.A. Kufuor.

On April 28, 2003, George Yankey was sentenced to two years' imprisonment along with Ibrahim Adam, Former Minister of Food and Agriculture, while Kwame Peprah, Former Minster of Finance and Economic Planning was sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

They were charged with conspiracy and causing financial loss of 20 million dollars to the State in a rice project at Aveyime in the Volta Region.

“The day that he was supposed to be giving judegment, he was called to the Castle, and he was away for several hours and when he came back you could see that he was haggard, angry looking, tired and then he told the court that yes I promised to give a long ruling but I have changed my mind. I’m going to give a short ruling. It was a red ink on a foolscap sheet, one-and-half pages period! So you see, we in the NDC, after this government, were subjected to all kinds of humiliation, intimidation, you know, abuse, to say the least and I’m not surprised that their own colleagues are now suffering it. If the head, the Minister of Internal Security should have to run away for his life, then that tells a lot of the story.”

“Let me shock you today, I will shock you. The Judgement that Justice Afreh read was not his judgement. You would be shocked, you would say how? Justice Afreh taught me in the Law School, I know the style of writing, I’ve read a lot of his judgements…he is not the abusing type. Now when Justice Afreh came to deliver his judgement, it was full of insults, abuse against the former Head of State, Professor Mills and people who were not standing trial before him. And you know what happened, in the court it was very clear, everybody in the courtroom was shocked. This was a judge who had written a judgement for several, several, several weeks and as he was reading, maybe he forgot that he was reading into the mic,…as he was reading he would get to places and ask himself ‘what is this word’, ‘and what is this word’, that was repeated several times. In some cases he even jumped over certain word. You know it’s sad that this man is dead, I feel so sorry, I wish he was alive I’m sure that one day he would have told his story. And people were shocked; how can a man write a judgement and over several weeks going through …and the man cannot even detect his words.”

Asked if he was making those allegations because he felt bitter about his incarceartion, he said far from being bitter, he is a better person from the experience. ““I have forgiven everybody who tried to break my spirit, but you see because God is so fruitful, God is so good, …all these processes have even made me a better human being, better than before I went through these problems. There are things that bothered me sometime ago, now they don’t…And now I have peace, I have joy, I am happy. There is nothing wrong with me, it is good, but you see I am saying this so that people will not become victims of what I went through.”

“I have forgiven them, I pray for them. Would you believe that I pray for President Kufuor, Hackman Owusu Agyemang, I pray for them, I pray for Afreh, as a matter of fact I still pray that God will give his soul everlasting rest and peace.”

George Sipa Yankey said vengeance is of the Lord, quoting the Bible, and explained that there was no way he could have revenged his ordeal in a more powerful manner than God did to those who wrote his sentence and forced it on the judge.

“There is one who is alive, but the two are dead.”