Murdered Judges Remebered

In June 1983, the nation woke up to the chilling news of the gory murders of three High Court judges and a retired army officer.

The bodies of the victims were later discovered near a military training post near Bundase in the Accra Plains.

The victims were Justices Cecilia Korangteng-Addow, F Poku-Sarkordie, K.A. Adjepong and Major Retired Sam Acquah. They had been picked or rather abducted by men in the name of the diktats of the December 31st coup and driven in military vehicles blindfolded to their fate.

Up till today, the crime for which they paid the ultimate price, has not been disclosed by the agents of the ruling Provisional National Defence Council, namely, Amedeka, Dzandu and Tekpor, who allegedly committed that dastardly act.

One of the judges was a nursing mother. She was breastfeeding her baby when the hooded goons picked her.

No warrant, no excuse, no arrangements to have anybody accompany the victims wherever they were being sent to.

When the abduction story was broken by the State-owned papers, the Chairman of the erstwhile Provisional National Defence Council, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings, went on air castigating those enemies of the revolution for bringing the regime into disrepute by their actions.

The PNDC Chairman pledged to bring the perpetrators to book, swearing to the highest heavens that neither he nor agents of the PNDC were engaged in that act of cold-blooded murder.

It turned out that a PNDC member was involved and that another high-profile PNDC operative was mentioned by the abductors. A key of one of the vehicles used by the abductors were picked on a table in the dining room of the Chairman’s wife.

Those were the days the whole nation was under a curfew.

When the nation had been forced to go to bed, the abductors managed a pass procured from the operational office manned by a PNDC Member operative.

The scandal led to the resignation of two high-profile PNDC operatives, who were all top notch lawyers.

To cover their shame and ameliorate the scandal, one of the murderers was sacrificed in a tribally skewed witch-hunt conducted by the architects of the PNDC.

Amartey Kwei, a Ga from development deficit Teshie, was sacrificed by the cabal.

The other operatives were smuggled out in a Hollywood style arranged jail break.

The bodies of the three judges, including the nursing mother, and the retired military officer were found charred, after a hail of bullets had been senselessly and inhumanly pumped into their helpless bodies.

A senior detective who ranks about the finest in the Police Service at the time, Superintendent Jacob Yidana, was put on the beat. The idea of the initiators of the wicked scheme was to kill and burn the bodies beyond recognition to reduce any chances of effective investigation and finger-pointing.

But God, the Judge of all the Earth, intervened.

The rains came, after the murderers had left the scene, miraculously dousing the flames and leaving the bodies in a state that would allow for identification.

However, when their own appointed detective came up with findings that pointed at them, they arrested the detective and detained him – without trial as usual and typical of the PNDC regime – for several years.

That is the full story behind the gruesome murder of the judges, whose remembrance service was held Monday, June 30, 2008.