"I used evidence as toilet roll" - ex-sergeant

Ex-police sergeant, Joseph Kwadjo Nuer, on Thursday got members of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) and others present at the hearing laughing when he said he had used a document, which could have served as evidence of his allegations of torture as toilet paper.

He was answering a question posed by Mrs Sylvia Boye, a member of the Commission, on the whereabouts of a leave letter he claimed to have received from his boss, one Mr. Adenu, after being tortured and hospitalized by armed military men on the eve of the June 4, 1979 uprising.

"My Lord, in the course of time, I thought I was never going to have the opportunity for redress and my economic situation was not the best so I used that letter and other documents as toilet papers."

He said in recent times Mr Adenu, his former boss at the Police Striking Force Unit, who gave him the letter asking him to go on leave for three months, has dissociated himself from his (Nuer's) torture.

"But I do not have that letter Adenu wrote and signed to show as evidence of his awareness of my plight."

Mr Nuer told the Commission that on June 3, 1979, he and three others, Corporal Yeboah, Sergeant Dapah, both drivers and Contable Asubonteng, all of the Police Striking Force, were detailed to witness a post-mortem on the body of an armed robber who died in a shootout.

He said they were instructed to dress in mufti and were given a civilian vehicle with registration number GZA 8832 to hide their identities.

This was because there was information that a group of armed robbers was going to show up at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital mortuary to claim the body of their dead colleague.

"When we got to the mortuary the doctors said for fear of the armed robbers they had postponed the post-mortem to an unspecified date, so we left and headed back to the office through the Makola Market area in Accra," he said.

Mr Nuer said when they got to Makola Market, they saw a military vehicle full of armed soldiers and they were asked to stop. The soldiers then ordered them to come out with their hands up.

He said the soldiers interrogated them and they disclosed their identity as policemen but the soldiers did not believe them and started beating them up.

"In the process, my three other colleagues managed to escape and I was left alone with the soldiers who striped me naked, collected my pistol with eight rounds of ammunitions and asked me scale a nearby wall."

Mr Nuer said the soldiers told him that day was his last day on earth and that if he looked back he would be shot dead.

He attempted to look back and a bullet was shot, which brushed his forehead and he fell.

He said they then took him to the street and drove their vehicle over his leg and he became unconscious.

"I was revived at the Police Hospital where I stayed for four days and escaped through the help of my wife and a friend because at that time the soldiers were moving from hospital to hospital killing military detainees and I was afraid," he said.

Mr. Nuer said at the time information had reached his superiors and colleagues that he was dead but they later got to know he was alive and Mr Adenu, granted him three months leave to recover.

He said he resumed work and after a year-and-a-half, his pistol, which the soldiers sized, was retrieved from an armed robber during an operation at Tesano in Accra.

"I was transferred to the Anti-Narcotics Unit of the Police Service at a time when former President Jerry Rawlings had taken over from President Hilla Limann in the infamous 31st December, 1981 coup," he said.