Kumasi, Sept 17, GNA - A witness on Tuesday appealed to the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to help solve the mystery surrounding the killing of her husband, Rockson Addai, a soldier at the Second Battalion of Infantry (2BN), Takoradi, in 1982.
Madam Cecilia Afriyie, a Kumasi trader, said "I was only informed that my husband had been shot and killed in Accra by a soldier." Madam Afriyie, who was giving evidence at the sitting of the NRC, said the military authorities refused to give any details about what really triggered the shooting incident.
She said she was staying with her husband at the military barracks and that prior to his death, he had been arrested alongside several other soldiers and detained for one month at the Nsawam Prisons. Mad Adai said whilst in detention Addai was severely tortured. "He was given knife cuts on the back."
The reasons assigned for their arrest was that they were allegedly plotting to stage a coup d'etat.
Upon his release he went back to his unit and six months after he told her they have been asked to go on operation duties in Accra. Mad. Afriyie said the wives of the soldiers one day went to the Takoradi Harbour to carry cocoa and on her return she was told by one soldier, Eshun, who was nicknamed "80-80" that Addai had been shot dead by another soldier in Accra.
The witness said she saw the body of her husband at the 37 Military Hospital morgue and that the body had bullet holes in the stomach and the head.
The military authorities later released it to the family for burial, she added.
Another witness, Charles Kwasi Nti from Essumeja, told the commission that a public tribunal refused to hear an appeal filed against a death sentence imposed on his late senior brother, Rex Osei Achamfour, in 1985.
He was shot by firing squad three days after the tribunal disallowed the appeal.
Mr Nti said his late brother, who was a senior clerk of the Ghana Commercial Bank, Accra New Town branch, was accused together with one Onu and a white man whose name the witness could not readily recollect, of stealing.
Nti said he had gone out with Achamfour's friend who had paid them a visit and returned at about 1130 hours to find that the doors to the rooms where he was staying with the brother and some returnees from Nigeria had been shot.
He said they were later picked up and severely tortured by the police at both the Kaneshie Police Station and the Accra Central Police Headquarters.
"They told me to tell where my brother slept the previous night but I explained I could not.''
I was made to inhale the smell of excreta in a pan latrine for one hour."
Nti said one John who could not stand the beatings offered to take the police to where my brother was. "We were hauled into a police truck and driven to where he was and they arrested him."
The police told Achamfour that a white man who they were investigating for stealing had confessed to them that he had given one million cedis to him.
"He readily admitted taking the money from the white man. We were then taken back to our house where he took the money from his safe and handed it over to the police."
The police searched and took the documents of my brother as well as my personal money of 120 Naira.
The witness said among documents the police seized included unpublished scripts his brother had written which were critical of Flt-Lt Jerry John Rawlings.
"Achamfour confirmed to me whilst being held in the condemned cells at Nsawam that he was going to be killed because of the scripts found in his room by the police."
When she took her turn in the witness box, Madam Christiana Boadi, a cosmetics seller in Kumasi, said her family had been nursing pain and grief over the murder of the father in 1982 by soldiers at the Kejetia lorry terminal.
"We are yet to come to terms with the brutal killing of our late father."
The witness told the NRC that his father, Kwadwo Boadi, was shot in the neck and his corpse dumped at the hospital by the soldiers. Giving the background to the incident, Madam Boadi said the father visited her at Akyeremade near Kokofu where she was on maternity leave after delivery.
"He came on Friday and decided to return to Kumasi on the following Monday."
The witness said when he got to the Kejetia lorry terminal he joined a queue and as he stood in the queue holding a polythene bag in which he had packed some money a group of soldiers emerged. They demanded to know from him what was in the polythene bag and he replied "there is nothing in it."
This annoyed the soldiers who ordered him to raise his hands up and shot him in the neck.
Madam Boadi said one Kwasi Basare, who knew the late Boadi and witnessed the incident rushed to inform them at the village. The mother, Adwoa Oforiwaa, corroborated her evidence. Madam Elizabeth Aninwaah, a trader in Kumasi, another witness, said soldiers seized her two vehicles, a Nissan and a Volks Wagon saloon cars, in 1979.
They also looted her goods, including floor tiles, engine oil, brake fluid and iron rods she was trading in at the time.
The soldiers also brought her to Kejetia where they publicly flogged her and later gave her an identification shave. Besides, she spent nearly three weeks in a military guardroom at the Fourth Battalion of Infantry (4BN).
The soldiers, Madam Aninwaah said, accused her of selling her goods above the control prices.
Madam Aninwaah pleaded with the Commission to recommend the restoration of her seized cars.
Mr Samuel Yeboah-Kodie, a former employee of the Produce Buying Company (PBC), said he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1983 by a public tribunal for no reason.
He spent nine years and four months in prison and was shifted from one prison to another.
"My house was confiscated by the tribunal. They ejected my family who were forced to sleep at the lorry station and the house occupied by some panel members of the tribunal.''
Yeboah-Kodie said the house was later returned to him but in bad state.
Witness wants refund of his 5,800 pounds sterling
Kumasi, Sept 17, GNA -A Witness, Kofi Opoku Agyeman on Wednesday pleaded with the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to recommend to the government to refund his 5,800 pounds sterling confiscated by the Ghana High Commission in London in 1982. He also wants an interest payment on the said amount calculated at the current bank rate.
Mr Agyeman, a Civil Engineer, said he remitted the said money through the High Commission and was meant for the payment of the medical expenses of his daughter, Sandra Agyeman, who was to undergo an operation to remove a tissue that had grown around the throat path. This was the time the ruling military junta had directed that all foreign remittances were strictly to be made through Ghana Missions abroad.
He was giving evidence at the public hearing of the NRC in Kumasi. Mr Agyeman said he had returned from London when the wife, a British, rang to inform him that Sandra had been diagnosed of having had a tissue grown around the throat path, a medical case that was confirmed by the Director of Medical Services.
He said to help save the life of his daughter he instructed the Standard Chartered Bank to transfer the amount, "my life savings to the High Commission for collection by my wife''.
He said the bank, following the receipt of a Bank of Ghana's covering letter, transferred the money through the affiliate bank in London, "as I had instructed".
The Witness said he had in his possession letters that showed that "the 5,800 pounds sterling landed safely at the High Commission. Surprisingly, when the wife went there to collect the money it was not given to her.
"I rang several times to find out what was happening but anytime the telephone lines went through and I mentioned my name I would be cut off".
Because of the incident, Mr Agyeman told the Commission that his marriage got broken saying, "my children up till now think I am an irresponsible father".
"My life savings is gone and not that only, but my wife as well." Mr Agyeman, who appeared visibly peeved, said: "Let us pray that a system like this is never visited on us again."
He appealed to the NRC to write to convince his estranged wife and children that: "I am not irresponsible but what happened was caused by the regime we had in the country at the time".
