Rawlings’ In-Law Battles Land Guards

*..But Faces Illegal Detention Claim *

Fire spitter, Mrs. Maria O’Sullivan-Djentuh, whose son’s troubled intimate relationship with the first daughter of ex-President Jerry John Rawlings landed her and her husband in the James Fort Prison in 2000, and brought the expression “Identification Haircut” into Ghana’s political lexicon, has hit the news again.

This time, a 50-year-old photographer who claims to have played a critical role in getting Prof John Evans Atta Mills elected as Ghana’s President, is accusing her of using the police to torment him by illegally throwing him into custody for an offense he knew nothing about.

But in a sharp rebuttal, Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh, 61, told The Herald that her accuser, Nana Kwame Nsiah Twum and eight others led by one Selorm Dei Tutu were rather arrested by the police for forcibly entering her plush estate property, wielding offensive weapons and threatening her with death.

According to the mother of Selassie Djentuh, who dated Ezanator Rawlings and came close to being the first in-law of the Rawlingses, she reported the matter to the police as any law abiding citizen would do and her assailants were arrested, arraigned before court and remanded in police custody by the court.

Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh, insisted her attackers were “Land Guards” recruited by Selorm Dei-Tutu, a native of Peki in the Volta Region, for one AC Asante to frighten her not to enforce a condition in a land purchase agreement signed between them (Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh and AC Asante).

However, Nana Kwame Nsiah Twum, who resides at Ashaley Botwe near Madina and a father of four, denied being a “Land Guard” but only out and about in search of his daily bread when he was arrested together with the nine others.

He told The Herald last Monday at the Chorkor Police Station, where he was remanded, that he was a photographer at the West Africa Secondary School (WASS) at Adenta, a suburb of Accra. Based on his conviction that the then candidate John Mills is a better man to lead this country, he composed a song for him entitled “I Care For You” to push the ‘Better Ghana Agenda’ into reality.

Although the song was not for monetary gains, he explained that after the victory of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), he was subjected to mockery and vitriolic attacks by friends and family members who expected his living condition to change from grass to grace, but the opposite happened forcing him to quit his profession as a photographer to end the humiliation.

The poor man said while wallowing in his poverty-stricken state, he was approached by one Mr. Dei-Tutu on November 29, to weed a plot of land together with others off the Spintex Road, for a fee. He obliged to the offer since it will enable him put food on the table for his family.

It was while clearing weeds on the land with the eight others that the heavily armed police came in and rounded them up under a claim that they were Land Guards. They were sent to the Greater Accra Regional Police Command charged with issuing “threat of death, force entry and rioting with weapons” against Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh.

He disclosed that they were later put before court and remanded in police custody to re-appear on December 19, 2011. He insisted his detention is unlawful as he is not a land guard or out to hurt Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh, but merely out working to feed his family.

Narrating her side of the incident, Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh told The Herald on Wednesday, that sometime in 1999, she sold four plots of land belonging to her real estate company, Maria Ville Ghana Limited, to Mr. AC Asante with a clause that the land would be repossessed should he failed put the land into use three years after the transaction.

In 2008, following Mr. Asante’s failure to develop the land, she wrote a letter to him requesting to have the land back as pertains in the real estate industry. The clause, she claimed is an international practice in the industry.

Unfortunately, Mr. Asante and some other buyers resisted her demands and resorted to arguing with her.

After series of allegations, quarrels and confrontation between them, she caused the arrest of the nine suspected land guards including Mr. Dei-Tutu, who on various occasions came to her office, claiming to be a journalist, a caretaker and later contractor for AC Asante.

She disclosed that there had also been several assaults, both verbal and almost physical, on her and her security guards at the gated Maria Ville Estate, and she had had to call in the police to save her from the marauding goons of Mr. Dei-Tutu, who were wielding cutlasses and clubs threatening her with death.

Mr. Dei-Tutu, she revealed, had on a separate occasion stormed her office and forcibly snatched her office keys from her and took their away, saying she was going to be “killed”.

Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh said she could not allow herself to be harassed any further hence she did the lawful thing by calling in the police to whisk away Dei-Tutu and his men to face the law after invading her estate, driving a 207 Benz bus with registration number GR 6097-10.

Meanwhile, the investigator Detective Sergeant Blewah, last Wednesday, shortly after the interview with Mrs. O’Sullivan-Djentuh, disclosed that the nine suspects had been granted bail by the Human Rights Court following an application made on their behalf by their lawyers on Wednesday, but they were expected to reappear on December 19, 2011.