Five pray for redress at NRC

Accra, Aug. 26, GNA - Five people - a Journalist, Minister of Religion, Auditor, a former Magistrate and Trade Unionist on Tuesday prayed the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) for redress for a number of human rights abuses they had suffered.
Retired Journalist Gershon Kwaku Dompreh, former Senior Editor of the Ghana News Agency (GNA), told the Commission, that he spent eight years in detention after a tribunal had tried him for "an act detrimental to the sovereign people of Ghana".
To date, however, the reasons for his conviction, which the Tribunal then deferred, are yet to be stated.
Mr Dompreh said he was arrested on the orders of the then District Secretary for the Aflao Area, in Volta Region, on an allegation that he was carrying classified documents to a businessman in Lome, Togo. He denied the allegation and said that his friend in Togo sent someone to collect a parcel from him and while the bearer was sending it, he was accosted by some members of the then People's Defence Committee (PDC), who seized it from him.
Mr Dompreh said he was sent to the cells of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for four months and then to the Tribunal. The Tribunal initially slapped him with a 20-year jail term but later changed it to 10 years.
He spent eight years in Nsawam Prison before he was released on a Presidential Pardon in 1995, after he had petitioned.
Earlier petitions from the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and the Commonwealth Press Association to the then government of the Provisional National Defence Council were not granted.
The former Editor said the Prisons Authorities did not give him any letter when they released him adding that they told him he was just in their custody and could, therefore, not give him any covering letter. Mr Dompreh said his wife died because of the trauma of his incarceration. Two of his children also died during the period.
The former Editor, now resident at Nkonya Wuropong, said he has not been receiving any benefit from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, even though, he worked for 28 years.
He explained that he filled the forms for his benefits but since he did not have money he could pursue it.
The Reverend Emmanuel Kwasi Titiati, another Witness, said he was arrested on January 3 1982, at his home in Adidome, without any charge by two Policemen, Corporal Amewovi and Garblah.
He said he was detained in the Adidome Police cells, where he developed high blood pressure and requested that he should be sent to hospital. During his one-week stay at the Adidome Hospital, soldiers came there and attempted to bring him to Accra for interrogation but he resisted. However, when they came for the second time they succeeded in removing him forcibly to the Adidome Police Station and was later taken to the Ho Mortar Regiment, Ho Police Cells, Ho Prisons and finally to the Police Headquarters in Accra.
On his release from Prison, he discovered that one Kotoka, a soldier, had seized his tractor and was using it for his personal purposes. Rev Titiati said he petitioned the Regional Secretary, and his tractor was released to him, but in a deplorable state.
He, therefore, asked that it should be sold and some money given him to top it to buy a new one.
He said he had received nothing since then.
Barrister Michael Komla Adzovie, who described himself as was a former Magistrate Grade One, said he was removed by a radio announcement on April 3 1986, in an exercise by then government in which a number of judges were stepped down, citing corruption and drunkenness among other malefactions.
He said he was very traumatised and could not petition because he was shocked and afraid to do so. "What was done to me was so shocking; if I went ahead, something worse could have happened to me," he said. Magistrate Adzovie said he tried getting into private legal practice, but he saw he was not suited for that.
Mr Adzovie said he was placed on reduced pension, after serving for 20 years on the bench and prayed the Commission to intervene to get him placed on full pension.
He, however, could not produce documents on the said removal and members of the Commission asked him to produce documents on his removal. The Commission's Chairman Justice Kweku Amua-Sekyi, then a serving judge with the Ghana Judicial Service, noted; "we can easily get hold of any such document".
He said the circumstances of the removal, which occurred in April 1986, could be found in the papers, adding that a law was passed to effect the removal but it was later repealed.
Another Witness Grespin Agbadzi, an employee of the Audit Service, then working with the Volta Regional Development Corporation, complained of a false charge of diverting 80,000 bags of cement and 6,000 bags of wheat flour in November 1981 by then Acting Volta Regional Minister that led to his interdiction.
He was subsequently placed in detention in Ussher Fort Prison, and although the National Investigations Committee, asked his employers to pay his salary they did not.
After his release from prison he discovered that his parcel of land at Ojobi had been resold and all the attempts he had made to reclaim it had been unsuccessful.
He prayed the Commission for appropriate compensation. Trade Unionist Rockson Amos Yeboah, who was then a building contractor and later became the People's National Party Constituency Chairman for Ga Rural, said his block manufacturing business collapsed in 1979 but he was later able to revive it. However, it collapsed again after the December 31 1981 coup.
He said he went into prison without charge for three months after the 1981 coup and also lost his two houses. He said since 1989 he had been a sojourner in USA, Hungary and Russia but life had still not been easy for him. 26 Aug. 03