Major Boakye Djan's sister testifies before NRC

Accra, Aug. 28, GNA- Major Boakye Djan, a member of the defunct Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, (AFRC) who recently returned from exile, was a among the large number of people in the public gallery of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to listen to the testimony of her sister Mrs Evelyn Owusu.

Mrs Owusu, alias nee Abena Yeboah Djan, told the Commission that she was arrested in October 1985, along with his brother Kojo Kyeremeh Djan, and a friend Mawuli Dra-Goka, and Atta Boakye, a nephew. Kyeremeh Djan and Atta Boakye were later executed on a charge of treason in 1986. She was detained without any charge for more than four years.

Mrs Owusu prayed the Commission for the exhumation of the body of Kojo Kyeremeh Djan for a fitting burial.

"He is a royal, he died a hero," she said, almost in tears, and further requested the criminal charge of treason on her late brother, Kyeremeh to be dropped.

Citing provisions in the 1960 and 1992 constitutions of Ghana, Mrs Owusu, said her two brothers Major Boakye Djan, and Kyeremeh were not guilty in resisting oppressive rule.

In her evidence and cross-examination that lasted almost 70 minutes, Mrs Owusu also prayed that the Commission recommend for the establishment of a monument in memory of Kyeremeh Djan and his colleagues.

An Educational Fund for the youth, from which scholarship should be awarded to the daughter of her late brother, Abena Yeboah Djan, then two years old, should be established.

Kyeremeh, she said, was then a member of the Students Union of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, at the time the December 31 1981 coup erupted. He opposed military rule, and led the students to counteract a group of miners that came to intimidate female students at the Africa Hall of the KNUST campus.

Mrs Owusu said the PNDC government declared Kyeremeh a wanted man, and added that it was because of his action on campus, and also being a brother of Major Boakye Djan.

The then government held him on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the PNDC, she said.

Kyeremeh, she said, went underground and later into exile in Togo. While in Togo, she said she often visited her brother, where she also met one Christian Goka, a brother of Mawuli Goka.

Mrs Owusu said soldiers searched her room and later came out with a sack in which they said it contained guns.

Kyeremeh, Mawuli and Atta Boakye, were handcuffed and were taken in armed vehicles to the Police Headquarters in Accra.

Mrs Owusu said she and Kyeremeh, as well as Mawuli and Atta were detained in the cells, for two weeks, during which policemen including one Bebli, subjected them to slaps and beatings.

Bebli spared her only because she was a woman, she said, and added that she was never interrogated during the period.

She said she was later transferred to the Osu Police Station, while Kyeremeh and Mawuli were sent to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).

Atta Boakye, then a student of Tema Secondary School, was released a traumatised person. He could not write his Advanced Level Examination, and had since taken to alcoholism.

Mrs Owusu said she sat behind the counter at the Osu Police Station, for six months, and resisted attempts during her detention by police personnel detailed to guard her to sleep with her.

She also resisted attempts to be taken to the BNI. She said she was sent to the James Fort Prisons, where she stayed for more than six months and was later sent to Mr Amonoo Monney, a State Prosecutor to be used as Prosecution Witness in the treason trial against Kyeremeh, Goka and 13 others at a national tribunal, chaired by Mr George Agyekum.

Mrs Owusu said she was made a prosecution witness under duress. She said she declined to identify some of the people the tribunal showed her, pointing out that she did not see the contents of the sacks, which were supposed to contain the guns, when the soldiers raided their house. Mrs Owusu said she was later transferred to Nsawam, where she spent four years in detention, without any document covering her detention. She said she is still living with the trauma of the sordid experiences, and agreed with the Commission to receive professional psychological counselling, together with her nephew Atta Boakye.

Mrs Owusu, now a student nurse in the United States of America, said she also lost her job as a laboratory assistant with the then Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority.

She said the house at Tema, which she left fully furnished at the time of her arrest, was looted on her return from detention. Mrs Owusu also told the Commission that his father Nana Kofi Djan, then 91, Chief of Abuokrom in the Brong Ahafo Region was harassed during the period by the BNI.

She said soldiers from the BNI often came for him and sent him to Accra, for interrogations on suspicion of being in league with Major Boakye Djan, to overthrow the government of the PNDC. They also destroyed the basement of his building, which he used as a carving workshop, Mrs Owusu said.