Opinion
On June 30, 1982, he supervised the most brutal Mafia-style state-sponsored execution of three Accra High Court judges, namely, Justices Sarkodie, Koranteng-Addow and Agyepong without any qualms, whatsoever.
In fact, in a nationwide simulcast, the then-Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings would vehemently deny in a palpably hollow and theatrically shrill voice that his so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta had anything to do with such dastardly act of terrorism. All three victims were of Akan descent.
A commission of inquiry – the Special Investigations Board – set up to find answers to these brutal murders would conclude that, in fact, the entire horrendous act had been planned and orchestrated by uniformed personnel acting on behalf of Messrs. Rawlings and Kojo Tsikata.
Mr. Rawlings would publicly shed a couple of crocodile tears and round up a few scapegoats, including Mr. Joachim Amartey-Kwei, a non-Ewe member of the Rawlings cabinet, and have these men summarily executed by firing squad.
Recently, though, Ghanaians have learned through a couple, or so, former key operatives of the PNDC reign-of-terror that, indeed, Messrs. Rawlings and Tsikata’s initial reaction to the abduction and brutal execution of the Accra High Court judges was to pop several cartons of celebratory champagnes.
Earlier on, unconscionable attempts had been made to portray the three judicial luminaries as thoroughgoing corrupt occupants of the superior bench. At the time of their savage assassination, the Ghana Supreme Court had been abolished via the junta edict of the Acheampong-led Supreme Military Council (SMC-I), originally called the National Redemption Council (NRC).
We must also quickly add that a recently retired Ghana Army major, Mr. Sam Acquah, had been executed alongside the judges. Legend also had it that judges who spoke the Ewe language, the mother tongue of Messrs. Rawlings and Tsikata, had been spared abduction and summary execution. We are also told that these included one Judge Adzovie, from Anloga, whose purported escape had been thoroughly and deliberately rehearsed in or near the Achimota Forest.
He would be slightly grazed by a bullet wound to the leg. Incidentally, Judge Adzovie’s son, Michael, was my classmate at St. Peter’s Secondary School (PERSCO), Okwawu-Nkwatia. Chairman Rawlings also presently hold the royal Anloga stool name and title of Togbui Avaklasu I. Is there any sheer coincidence here, if one may aptly ask? During much of the 1980s, Chairman Rawlings virulently maligned the credibility of the country’s judicial process.
He even claimed the latter to be irredeemably corrupt and went ahead to establish what became known as the Military Tribunals and later the Public Tribunals.
Chairman Rawlings further claimed that not only was the traditional judicial system undesirably snail-paced, it was also irreparably compromised. The veritable kangaroo courts that were the People’s Tribunals and People’s Courts, almost totally dispensed with legal representation of accused persons who were swiftly and literally railroaded.
Sentences handed down varied from summary execution by firing squad and long prison terms, as well as corporal punishment. Chairman Rawlings and his criminal gang of butchers and executioners have never publicly and remorsefully apologized for the abduction and summary liquidation of Justices Agyepong, Koranteng-Addow and Sarkodie, and so it is not clear just why the Butcher-of-Sogakope would have the national media treat the 34 judges and magistrates recently caught on tape playing fast and loose with justice, like the orgiastic sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church in medieval times, with kid gloves.
Well, I have two theories here. One, most of the judges caught on both audio- and videotapes by Mr. Anas Aremeyaw Anas were very likely appointed by National Democratic Congress’ leaders. And two, like the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court that decided the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition in favor of Messrs.
Mahama and Afari-Gyan, these judges and magistrates have been secretly sworn to being guaranteed protection at all costs by the Trokosi Mafia, in return for a share of judgment-debt monies fleeced from our national coffers and the Ghanaian taxpayer. Not too long ago, I painfully commented on how judges who sat on judgment-debt cases issued curious verdicts that were more characteristic of European colonial judges than bona fide Ghanaian patriots.
