Witness demands compensation for loss of car and beating

Accra, July 23, GNA - Mr. Yaw Bekoe, a farmer from Agona Swedru, on Wednesday prayed the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), to compensate him for the beatings he received from soldiers, while pursuing his seized car in 1982.

He said a soldier stopped him at gunpoint in 1982, when he was returning from Tema and subjected him to severe beating. He said the soldier slapped him and used his face as a punching bag and blood oozed from his face. He said the two friends with him in the car were also severely beaten when they tried to intervene.


Mr Bekoe said he would have made a fortune between 1982 and 1987, if the Datsun 140 J car, which his younger brother had shipped to him to be used as a commercial vehicle had not been seized. He therefore, prayed the Commission for a replacement of the vehicle.


According to Mr Bekoe, he assisted his brother to travel to Germany on condition that he sent him a car.


The car, he said, arrived at the Tema Port on January 3, 1982 adding that all cars, which had arrived at the Port, including his, were sent to the State House on the orders of the new government.

Mr Bekoe said he paid all the duties on the car after which one Sgt Jecty gave him a slip to remove his car from the State House, but the car was nowhere to be found. He went to the State House for four months looking for his car but to no avail.


He said he went to Anyinam upon information from one Corporal Tetteh that soldiers were using the car there, but still he could not find it. The witness said he then went to lodge a complaint with Mr Kwamena Ahwoi, a functionary of the erstwhile Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), who also gave him "a paper" to collect the car, but he still did not trace it.


He reported the case to the Police who later told him that it could not be located anywhere in Ghana.


Mr Bekoe said his counsel wrote to the Attorney General' Department after which his car was replaced with an unserviceable VW Passat, a but after putting it in shape, the engine was damaged after two months. He said he wrote letters to, and had audience with the then Chief of Staff, Colonel Baryeh, but he told him there was nothing the government could do for him.