Judges were not murdered at Bundase -Witness

A witness at Thursday’s sitting of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) has claimed that the three High Court judges and retired army officer were not murdered at Bundase Military Range as has been widely believed.

The witness, Mensah Amepofio, who described himself as educationist, said: "There were no silicon bubbles in soil where the victims were supposed to have been murdered. Ballistic fume contraction was zero at Bundase. I also detected that there was a Hoover expansion at the place", he said.

Mr. Amepofio, who also admitted to the Commission that he was a forensic investigator, and "even more than that" added: "The boys felt they were intelligent but you can't be more intelligent than the God who created you. "The executions did not take place at Bundase." Mr. Amepofio said he was prepared to give some aspects of his evidence in camera.

In camera hearings are granted to witnesses whose evidence borders on national security, offends morality and jeopardises the personal security of the witness, in the estimation of the Commission. Mr. Amepofio said there was a raid on his house while he was in detention at the Ministries Police Station for alleged hording.

During the raid it was discovered that he had classified information on the murder of three the high court judges and the retired army major in 1982. He said at one time he was queried at the Gondar Barracks about a report he had written on the murders.

Mr. Amepofio said he admitted he had written a detailed report to Mr. Inzah, the Standing Officer in the investigation of the murder, who had fled the country. He said he believed that Mr. Inzah placed the information on the investigation in the international domain.

Giving details on how he got to be detained at the Ministries Police Station, Mr. Amepofio said he met Hajia Baby Ocansey when he was conveying some relief items from the warehouse of the Ghana National Procurement Agency (GNPA).

Amepofio said Ocansey later came to his warehouse at Kaneshie market with a group of soldiers, whom she claimed, were from the Office of the PNDC. He alleged that they were holding a note signed by Nana Ato Dadzie, then Secretary at the PNDC Secretariat, to release 5,000 bags of sugar and 600 bales of salted fish (Kako). The note said payment for the goods would be made later.

Mr. Amepofio said when payment was not forthcoming he went to Ocansey and then to Nana Dadzie. He said Nana Dadzie gave him a note bearing a single word, which looked like a password to be given to Mr Kofi Djin, then Secretary for the Interior.

According to Mr. Amepofio, Mr. Djin rang one Azantilow to detain him at the Ministries Police Station. He said at the Ministries Police Station, he denied knowing Ocansey, adding that two young officers who quizzed him asked him to be careful of the woman because she was a long standing friend of Nana Dadzie.

Mr Amepofio said he was in detention at the Ministries Police Station for two months, during which he was picked intermittently to Gondar Barracks and tortured.

At one time at the Gondar Barracks, he said, he was stripped naked and asked to have sex with the floor. His penis was tied to some bricks and he was asked to dance around with the bricks hanging on his manhood. He was also beaten during the dance and the soldiers used cigarette butts on his shoulders, which had left permanent burnt marks on them.

Mr. Amepofio said he urinated more than 12 times in a day due to the manhandling of his penis and he walked like somebody with a rupture.

The Commission inspected and reported that a bit of the tip of the penis was missing. It also reported that there were scars on the knuckles, right thumb and left arm. Amepofio said it was at the Gondar Barracks that he realised he "had been worked out into a substance" and probably Ocansey had been tailed to keep surveillance on him.

He said one time at the Ministries Police Station he was called out by two gentlemen, who made him sit in a truck. He said was handcuffed to a rail in the truck and there were three dead bodies in the truck. Soldiers guarded him in the truck.

The truck passed through High Street, the James Town Prison, Dogo Beach and headed towards the Mortuary Road. When the vehicle stopped near a bush to pack bags called "Efiewura Sua Me", he freed himself and escaped and took refuge at Dogo Beach for three days.

There, a young man believed to be a conservancy labourer gave him clothing, which was smeared with human excreta for the three days. He later hid in a house at Dansoman, but his lawyer asked him to surface in his own interest. A young man in the community reported him to the Dansoman Police, who picked him and sent him to the Police Station where he was detained for three days.

Mr Amepofio said Mrs Justice Annie Jiagge applied on his behalf to the Police for his release, but the Police said they were in no way connected with his arrest, and that he had to apply to the Co-ordinator of Revenue Collection and Tribunals.

He spoke of his investigative skills and role in the investigations into the death of two Catholic clerics, Father Paul and Father Kaku, who supposedly drowned.

In all, he spent a total of 22 months in detention and lost his school, his house and four vehicles, he said.

Ocansey and Nana Dadzie who were at the NRC denied the accusations. Ocansey who said she was then a Public Relations Officer of the Muslim Women's Association said Mr Amepofio had taken goods from the GNPA on a false premise that they were relief items for the AME Zion Mission, hoarded them and sold them at exorbitant prices against a PNDC Law.

She implicated Nana Dadzie and Mr David Walenkaki for conspiring with Mr Amepofio to arrest and detain her at the Police Headquarters when she reported Mr Amepofio as hoarding goods.

She said she had not been on speaking terms with Mr Dadzie since then. She denied ever collecting any money or goods from Mr Amepofio who she called Carlos Minston.

Nana Dadzie said the signatures purported to have been his were forged and he only met Mr Amepofio, alias Carlos Mensah, when he came to his house after the purported seizure of his goods. Even then he was sick. He also denied organising the arrest of Ocansey. The Commission expressed the desire to reconcile Hajia Ocansey and Nana Dadzie.