To Our Three Judges

Today marks the 23nd Anniversary of the killing of our Three High Court Judges and retired Army Officer. They were killed on 30 June 1982. Some hired thugs killed them. It was in the PNDC era, then about six months in office.

They did not commit any known crime against the PNDC Order at the time. They were not subjected to any trial on any charges which the disorder of the day must have fashioned or manufactured against them.

They were killed because they had to be so killed. They had done no wrong.

Their only crime must have been that they happened to be High Court Judges, and an Army Officer whose killing should give the indication that Law and Order had broken down, and that there was no longer the soldier gentleman, but the really rough and killer-happy soldier. Either way, the premise had been sad indeed.

And sad still to relate the bullets that killed them were willful and wicked off any formal battle fields. They were only told that they had not been taken from their homes (as they were made to understand at first) to consult them on the composition of the leadership of a coup government they had planned to effect, but that they had been picked up to be killed. Yes? Yes!

The Soldier among them did not have his riffle on him. The Judges were helpless without an advocate close by. They only obeyed due order to kneel down to be shot point blank. And the bullets shot from behind them, cut them into pieces as does the butcher's axe with a lumb of beef.

And it was soon over. The killers brought down a jerry-can full of petrol, poured it over the bodies and set them ablaze with the view of erasing any trace of their killing. Oh how satanic! Come, let us go to them, and mourn them awhi1e. They did no wrong; they were killed in vain without cause, at all.

And without just cause, eight prominent people, all military men of high ranks individually and severally, were lined up and killed by almost the same PNDC leadership, earlier on. Disorder upon disorder, apologies to the Ecclesiastics, all has been disorder.

The soldier among them had just then arrived at his residence when picked that evening. Two of the judges were about to reach their respective dining tables for dinner. The female judge was however breastfeeding her baby girl. And by whose order, and at whose behest?

Oh, let us reach the Remembrance Service, and pray for them this 30th June 2004, twenty-two years after they had been killed, and burnt, and buried.

It is sad that the successful killings of the judges and the army officer were duly celebrated with tots and draughts of champagne, exclusively. It should be beautiful to be disorderly, indeed. It is equally astonishing to realise that we can be so vain, and so inhuman, and so wicked. Oh Judgement!...

If that is not so, how come that some of us have remained fanatics of that era of disorder so much so that it (the era) is described as divine? And they settle down year by year to celebrate it with pomp and pageantry amid wild political speeches over sumptuous anniversary meals prefaced with anniversary champagne drinking.

There is nothing divine about that except where our definition of what is divine is distorted with the madness of the disorder of the era when the 3 High Court Judges were murdered in cold blood and their bodies set on fire. It was Satanic enough, and satanic still to impute some divinity to the killings, and the burning of their bodies.

Their charred bodies were hardly recognizable. They were carefully picked up, and tied up in pieces of white cloth before their remains could be laid in their respective coffins for burial. They deserve a few drops of our tears, and never cheers of a champagne party.

And deservingly so, their killings have ever since been marked by the Bar and the Bench with solemn church services. It has been commendable. We perish where we forget the past with impunity.

The politics of it which was observed too soon was to the effect that in the early stages, successive Chief Justices were not attending the anniversary Remembrance Service, which the PNDC earlier on had to outlaw. The light must come to lead us out of the encircling gloom of the era, and comfort the ailing hearts of the bereaved in that heinous quadruple murder!

And the judges continue to stay in our political life.

They wouldn't die by that bizarre death preferred to them. No, they would not die until perhaps full justice is meted out to all those who allegedly masterminded the killings, and are known to have escaped prosecution in the then PNDC Tribunal Courts.

And why shouldn't those in the thick of the adoption and killings who accept all that as divine-inspired own up to justify that supposed unique and divine act? None can deceive us with some evocation of some divine order in the killings. Since when did Satan become the ally of Divinity?

Well, if our martyred Judges (and the Army Officer) wouldn't die, the Chief Justice is going to support them to live, in statues of course. And come next 30 June, the Chief Justice may unveil their Statues at the precincts of the Supreme Court building in Accra. It is going to cost him some 500 million cedis to achieve that purpose.

And the statues should remind us that the 3 high court judges even now live, and live purposefully to remind us that their killings have been the most heinous crimes ever committed in the political system, and must he recognised as such. And the killings should not be repeated. Therefore coup politics that brought the killings about should be resisted at all cost, and never again be allowed to occur in the political system.

In effect, coup politics is satanic; it destroys us; it cannot be divine; it is lawless; it is without the order of the Law; it cannot be justified on any moral grounds. The greatest crime ever is to kill without just cause. The statues of our 3 High Court Judges should symbolise all that.

Our martyred Judges lived by the Law, and dispensed Justice by the rule of Law.

Ironically, they were killed without the Law. The Law then should be upheld at all times to avoid the repetition of that tragedy in our political life. The Law is supreme. Its supremacy is divine-like, even as witnessed in the Ten Commandments, which God Almighty through Moses gave to mankind.

The whole Judicial system is ordered by the Law, the Law of the Constitution, and not the lawless Law of the soldier killer dictator who rules without the democratic order. The system of the law should endure, but if we forget, those statues of honour will remind us.

I remind us again that those who die in pursuance of the administration of the rule of law will ever live in the memory of the law, and in the physical presence of all in need of the justice of the Law. The law does not die; those who administer the law objectively will not die either.

The occasion of the adoption and killing of the Judges put the whole of the Judicial System into disarray. Our judges abandoned their bungalow homes, and sought refuge elsewhere by day and by night.

It was a sad moment then especially when the traditional courts were virtually abandoned for the tribunals which the Bar professionally boycotted.

The statues are not going to be little gods to worship.

They are not going to receive any libation of wine from us. They are not going to be evoked to dictate the direction of the dispensation of justice at the Courts of Law. They are going to be a reminder that we care to continue where they left in the law profession at the Bar and on the Bench.

We care that intimidation and harassment of our Judges should flop. We witnessed it in the 1st Republic with the removal of the judges where the Chief Justice himself was a victim. We encountered it in the 2nd Republic where the political leadership wouldn't re-instate a Civil Servant whose removal was considered contrary to the Law.

And in the (P)NDC time, the judges who were considered anti-Government were harassed to retire before their time. They are luckier they live. The 3 High Court judges who should have statues raised to their memory did not have that much luck. Our own people killed them.

It should be possible then to place the 3 Statues in a position that would command an all commanding view from all angles, where they could 'see' and be seen by all. We care, and we must be seen to care.

The political system should confer on them the fond accolade of "The BIG THREE JUDGES" even as we have the BIG SIX, and the anniversary of their killings should be observed not only by our lawyers, but all Ghana in whatever way possible. They should be made formal martyrs of the Law of the Constitution.

And lest we forget, the statue of the Army Major who was also killed could be mounted in all the Army Barracks throughout the country to remind all soldiers to say no to coups because they are evil. Our soldiers cannot turn murderers over night.

And here we come in a solemn procession led by the Chief Justice, and with the statues of the 3 High Court Judges in the lead, let us sing and pray; Lord in this Thy Mercies day - Ere is past for ere away - Humbly at the feet we pray ... and our condolences, ever, to you. We share in your pain, and in your grief.