Witness still wondering why he was arrested and tortured

Ex-Lance Corporal Godwin Wegudi Ayiworoh is still struggling to understand why he was picked up in 1985 and detained for more than seven years.

Moreover, he is still at a loss why the Ghana Army has not paid him seven years salary prior to his discharge from the Armed Forces in 1992. When the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), sitting in Accra asked him on Thursday what he thought was the reason for the non-payment of his salary, he shot back: "That is the question."

Ex-Lance Corporal Ayiworoh told the Commission that he was detained for seven years at Nsawam Prisons prior to his discharge from the Service in 1992. However, he was not paid any salary although he was regarded as a serving soldier for the period he was in incarceration.

The ex-soldier, then stationed at the Mortar Regiment at Ho, said on 19 June 1985, his Commanding Officer, the late Major Nunoo, asked him to prepare for an exercise in Accra.

He said he was driven by one Brigadier Klutse to Accra where they finally ended at Gondar Barracks. Ex-Corporal Ayiworoh said at the Gondar Barracks, Brigadier Klutse asked him to sit down and wait for him, but he never returned. Hours later some soldiers came and drove him to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).

At the BNI, the ex-corporal said, he was never interrogated, neither was he made to write any statement. He was sent to a cell where he met the late Tommy Thompson, one time publisher of the Free Press newspaper, one George Adjei and Seidu Iddrisu.

Ex-Corporal Ayiworoh said at the BNI, the soldiers used knives to cut the backs of detainees. After four months detention at the BNI some of the detainees were released, but he and Seidu were rather handcuffed and sent to Nsawam Prisons, where he spent seven years.

Ayiworoh said while in prison a warder named John Attipoe slapped him and in a struggle that ensued, the warder bit him. Ayiworoh said he together with other prisoners went on hunger strike, but he collapsed on the fifth day and came around only in the Prisons Clinic, where he saw that he was being given intravenous infusion.

The Ex-Lance Corporal said he found it difficult to understand his incarceration and was furious when he learned that he had been pardoned under an Executive Instrument.

Ayiworoh said he spent more than 14 years in the Army, but was only given 600,000 cedis as benefit after petitioning the Ghana Army. He said he is not on pension. Now in his mid-forties, he said he has neither a wife nor a child.

Setrana said at the BNI office he was made to sit at the reception from 10am to 12 midnight and he had to make noise before he was attended to. He said the next morning he was taken to meet Nanfuri, then Director of BNI. On reaching his office he "threw" questions at him in a "dictatorial" manner but he (Setrana) refused to answer and told him to be more civil in his way of questioning.

He said Nanfuri asked him questions about Amewordeh's business, relationship with some military personnel and his whereabouts, adding that he had no answers to all these questions.

"I was then brought back to the reception and made to sit there till 2.30 am. Upon a phone call, one of the officers picked me up, put me in a military vehicle in which there were eight armed and fearful looking soldiers and I was taken to the Gondar Barracks."

Setrana said at the barracks he was taken to a dark room in which there was a tall wall beyond which one could not see and there he was interrogated and tortured by three masked soldiers.

"They took off my shirt and vest, tied my hand to a chair and one of the soldiers who was an officer asked me the same questions Nanfuri asked me whilst the other two whipped my back with iron rods merciless till blood started oozing from my back."

He said he was kept in a room where there was light for 24 hours over a period of three and half weeks, adding that during that period he slept on a hard board.

Setrana said later Captain Pattington came and asked the soldiers whether they had got any information from him. He said Captain Pattington was told he did not have answers to the questions so he ordered them to bring him to his office.

He said when he got to Pattington's office he was let go with his bruises on his back and an impaired vision because of the room where there was light permanently. "I never thought I would be alive to tell my story, but I thank God this government has made that possible through the NRC," he said.

"Two years ago, I sent a petition to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and I am still awaiting the result. "Meanwhile my friend who heard of my arrest and absconded to Togo is back in the country and has written a statement to buttress my story to the CHRAJ," he said.

Jacob Kwao Baiden, a former fire officer, on his part told the Commission that he was picked by a group of soldiers in "Balaclava masks" on Saturday 28 September 1985, after closing from night shift at the Airport and sent to Gondar Barracks.

He said at the barracks, the soldiers shaved him with broken bottles and ordered him into a large room, which looked like a bonded warehouse, with about 20 people in it. He said the soldiers asked him to undress.

Baiden said the room looked very scary with a lot of bullet marks and bloodstains all over the walls, and he felt very uncomfortable. He said when he asked the soldiers what his offence was they ordered him to shut up.

Baiden said he was made to hold his ears and jump many times, whipped with twisted wire and warned not to shed tears in his pains. Any time he asked about his offence, the soldiers tortured him more, he said, adding that the beating left a cut on his right arm.

Baiden said the soldiers made him roll over the floor, from the morning they picked him till 1200 hours. They then asked him to jump while holding his male organ. He said he also obliged to their order to drink his urine.

Baiden said he was very tired, but the soldiers gave him a cutlass and asked him to weed. He obliged and weeded till 1700 hours. He was later marched into the room, which looked like a warehouse and he had to grope to find his shirt.

He said the next morning, another soldier relieved the first one and he also made him weed. When he asked for food, he was asked what rights he had to ask a soldier to give him food.

Baiden said he gave 10 cedis to a soldier to buy him some "waakye", but the soldier brought neither the food nor the money. Rather he was ordered to chew gravel. He said he tried but could not chew it.

Baiden said at about 1600 hours, when they were in the large room, he showed his identity card to another soldier and he told him his case was not serious.

He said on the third day, another soldier arrived, called his name and ordered him out. He was marched to a room marked CO, where he met the Welfare Officer of his fire station and their driver.

Baiden said the Commanding Officer brought his identity card out, gave it to the Welfare Officer and apologised to him (Baiden), saying "We're sorry. You're lucky."

He said after his release, he felt pains when urinating and even urinated blood for some time and sought treatment at the Korle bu Teaching Hospital. Maulvi Wahab Adam, along with the other commissioners, expressed sympathy to Baiden for his ordeal and said the quick response of the welfare officer of the Fire Service to the plight of their colleague was an example worthy of emulation by organisations.

Baiden requested that Government should ensure that civilians were not sent to Gondar Barracks.

Madam Susuanna Ohenewah Korlettey of Santa Maria, who used to deal in second hand clothing, said in 1982, a soldier diverted the course of an Nsawam-bound bus on which she and her son travelling to El Wak Stadium where they were flogged.

She said the soldiers accused them of paying above the approved fare. Ohenewah said she developed hypertension from that traumatic experience and she also stopped her trading.

She said a Toyota bus her late husband, Timothy Korlettey, a former officer of the Special Branch, parked at the barracks one-and-a-half weeks before the December 31 Revolution disappeared following the revolution.

Ohenewa, now with four children, said that her husband died from excessive worry over the loss of the bus, and she depended on benefactors to take care of her children.

General Emmanuel Erskine, a commissioner, described the events of the maltreatment of women as a shameful past and said never should that happen again.

He expressed the hope that Ohenewah would forgive the perpetrators and look with hope into the future. Dr Sylvia Awo Mansa Boye, another commissioner, said although there were rumours of maltreatment during the revolutionary years, Ohenewah's story showed that they were true.