Help solve mystery over my son's disappearance

Opanin Yaw Asumadu, a Trader, has appealed to the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to assist in solving the mystery over the disappearance of his eldest son during the fiery and traumatic days of the June 4, 1979 Military Uprising.

He told the Commission that some soldiers after severely beating his son, Peter Owusu at the Kumasi Central Market, took him away.

"Ever since, I had neither heard of him nor had the faintest idea about what happened to him."

Opanin Asumadu was testifying before the NRC at the on-going public hearing at the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Hall in Kumasi on Tuesday.

He said at the time he disappeared, he had just completed Opoku Ware Secondary School and was about 17 years old.

Owusu had dared to asked why the soldiers were slapping and kicking the father in his shop when they turned their anger on him, brutally assaulted and sent him away.

Opanin Asumadu said he made an effort to check at the army barracks in Kumasi, a day after the incident if he was sent there but was ordered by a soldier to leave the place for his own safety.

In his evidence, he said he was trading in flour, sugar and rice in 1979 at the Kumasi Central Market and had a warehouse.

He said four days after the Uprising; soldiers invaded his shop and auctioned all the goods in it.

"They asked if I had a warehouse and when I answered that it was not anywhere near the market, they began slapping and kicking me" and said it was at that point that Owusu questioned the justification of their "physical assault on me."

Opanin Asumadu told the Commission that as a result of the hefty slaps, he had now gone blind in the right eye.

The soldiers also seized his Peugeot pick-up, he said, adding that, his trading business collapsed and all his children, who were in school, dropped out.

Mr Christian Appiagyei, one of the Commissioners, said: "I hope we will get to the bottom of this disappearance."

Mr John William Opoku, another trader, said soldiers in 1979 looted and auctioned goods in his shops and warehouses at Bawku, Bolgatanga and Navrongo.

He said he used to receive his supplies from the UAC, PZ, GB Ollivant, Nestle Ghana Limited and Lever Brothers, among other companies.

Mr Opoku said his shops and warehouses were so stocked that the soldiers took one month to auction the wares that included textiles; wristwatches; electrical gadgets; shoes and provisions.

He said he was tortured and made to roll on the floor by the soldiers and claimed that one Lieutenant Patrick Donkor fired at him but missed narrowly.

The Witness recounted how after pouring petrol in his warehouse, Lt Donkor fired his pistol that ignited and completely burnt the whole building.

The Army Officer, he said, ordered that he should be put in a military Land Rover driven to Bolgatanga.

"On the way, Lt Donkor would call me after every three minutes and order me to show up my nose. He would then squeeze it so hard and slap me. I began to bleed profusely from the nose", he added.

Mr Opoku said he was detained at the Airborne Force at Tamale for four months and kept at Navrongo Prisons for another three weeks.

He said he was at the Airborne Force when the soldiers brought in Alhaji Bawa Ayamba, a Tamale Businessman in a weak state.

The Witness said Alhaji Ayamba narrated to him how Lt Donkor and the soldiers mixed cement in water and forced him to drink it after which he was put in one of his tipper trucks, drive through the streets while the Army Officer hit him on the head with a hammer.

Mr Opoku also told the Commission that two Frafra men, whose goats, numbering about 200 were seized by the soldiers, were also brought to the barracks and tortured.

They were released after the soldiers had slaughtered and eaten the meat of all the goats, he said.

Another Witness, Opanin Andrews Boakye-Yiadom, a Welder at the Suame Magazine in Kumasi, narrated to the Commission how the freezing of his accounts at the Social Security Bank in 1982 by the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) regime frustrated his ambition of purchasing a Neoplan bus for commercial transport operation.

He said he then had 180,000 cedis in his accounts and gave the price of Neoplan bus at the time as 71,000 cedis.

The Witness said he appeared before the Citizens Vetting Committee and showed to the committee his cocoa passbook that showed his earnings from cocoa sales and gave evidence of returns on a corn mill he was operating.

He said his account was de-frozen after four years, adding, by that time, inflation had devalued his money at the bank and the price of a Neoplan bus had gone beyond 300,000 cedis. Opanin Boakye-Yiadom said his worst nightmares were to start when his account was frozen and was forced to sell his Bedford truck to one Nana Yaa at 120,000 cedis.

He said three months after the woman had bought the vehicle, she returned it and demanded a refund of the money she paid.

Witness said, he refused and Nana Yaa brought in soldiers, who sent him to the barracks, subjected him to severe beatings and locked him up in a guardroom.

He said in the guardroom, he met a woman and a badly battered man with a swollen head and mouth, who turned out to be Odifo Samuel Asare, the Founder and Leader of the 'Lord Is My Shepherd Church'.

Opanin Boakye-Yiadom said it took the intervention of the then Imam at the Fourth Battalion of Infantry (4BN) to save him from execution.

The soldiers said: "I should have sold the truck to Nana Yaa at 54,000 cedis so I was made to refund 66,000 cedis to her.

"She, therefore, took away my truck at 54,000 cedis and later re-sold it for 250,000 cedis."

Opanin Boakye-Yiadom appealed to Ghanaians to resolve never to accept any violent overthrow of the Constitution.

A former Principal Technical Officer of the Cocoa Services Division (CSD), Mr Kofi Asenso Mensah, when he mounted the Witness box, said he was unfairly and unjustly jailed for four years by a public tribunal in 1984 and wanted his name cleared.

He was accused of diverting some cartons of fungicides, a charge, he vehemently denied.