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General News of Tuesday, 15 January 2002

Source: Ghanaian Chronicle

I'll Name Brains Behind Murder Of Judges -Amedeka

Lance Corporal Amedeka, the man at the center of the murder of the three High Court Judges and a retired Army Officer in 1982, has braced himself up to testify before the reconciliation commission when it starts sitting. Amedeka who was sentenced to death in absentia has started talking to some government officials in Benin. Chronicle around the clock intelligence team in Cotonou has finally found out the plush hotel (name withheld) that Amedeka has been lodging for the past two months.

Credible sources believe that Amedeka’s hotel bills, covering food, accommodation and entertainment as well as his personal security are being picked up by some patriotic citizens who are resolved to have the true story of the murdered judges told. Chronicle also gathered that last year, Amedeka decided to spill the beans and therefore relocated from Nigeria to Benin where he has been waiting to appear before the National Reconciliation Commission.

Chronicle intelligence at the hotel also confirmed that some prominent and concerned Ghanaian citizens have had several contacts with Amedeka. He has reportedly dropped names of some top former government officials who personally took him to the residences of the victims before they were brutally assaulted and murdered in cold blood.

Lance Corporal Amedeka hit the headlines in 1982 during investigations into the gruesome murder of the high court judges, Justices K.A. Agyepong, Cecelia Koranteng Addow and Poku Sarkodie and the retired army officer, Major Acquah in the heat of the Rawlings revolution. Together with his other rank colleagues, Tony Tekpor, Dzandu and Hekli, he effected the abduction of the four people on the night of 30th June 1982 and subsequently murdered them at the Bundase shooting range, off the Accra-Aflao road.

A Special Investigations Board set up by the then Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) under the chairmanship of Justice Azu Crabbe recommended the trial of Amedeka, his colleagues and a former PNDC member, Joachim Amartey Kwei.

A special tribunal tried the accused persons, but before the trial could be completed, dissident soldiers broke into the Nsawam and Ussher Fort prisons in June 1993 and released some of their colleagues including Lance Corporal Amedeka, who has since been living in neighbouring countries. Amartey Kwei, Tony Tekpor, Dzandzu and Helki were all found guilty of murder, sentenced to death and executed by firing squad.