We can't tell everything in public - Witness

Accra, Nov. 3, GNA - It is evident that some Witnesses at the National Reconciliation Commission public hearing would not give the grisly aspects of their stories although they had stated them in the written statements to the Commission.

One such Witness is Ex-Warrant Officer II Albert Agyekum, who admitted to the Commission on Monday that his genitals were pulled when he was being tortured at the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for alleged complicity in a coup plot in 1988.

Although that was part of his written statement, Ex-WO II Agyekum, formerly of the Two Brigade in Kumasi, initially avoided that in his oral evidence, and only spoke on it later when the Commission drew his attention to it.

"My lord, it's true, but we can't tell everything in public," he told the Commission.

The Commission resumed its public hearing in Accra on Monday after sitting in camera the previous week.

According to the Witness, he was visiting his brother, Col. Owusu Agyekum, then a medical officer at the 37 Military Hospital and former Minority Leader in Parliament on the ticket of the National Convention Party.

The brother lived at Juba Ridge at Burma Camp, he said. He said within 10 minutes after his brother had returned home from work, a group of security personnel, led by Mr Peter Nanfuri, came to search the residence, then at Juba Ridge in Burma Camp after which they invited the two of them to come along to the BNI.

The Witness said at the BNI, he and his brother were separated, interrogated, and later taken round some parts of Accra. He was later detained at the BNI Annex for a year.

NRC takes evidence from 93-year old woman

Accra, Nov. 3, GNA - Ninety three year old Madam Efua Abantoako, from Senya Breku who appeared before the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) on Monday said during the 1979 coup, soldiers beat her up severely resulting in her current inability to wear sandals.

She said being a baker and a trader then, she was accused of hoarding 320 half pieces of cloth and 67 bags of cement resulting in her arrest and torture.

Madam Abantoako, who said the 320 half pieces of clothes the soldiers found in her room were for her personal use, adding that the soldiers seized all the clothes, some of which were already sewed, leaving her nothing to wear.

She said she petitioned the Military Administration for the release of her clothes but nothing came out of it.

She prayed the commission to recommend for a redress and for subsequent compensation.

Mr. Samuel Kwabena Mensah, from Achimota, now unemployed told the NRC that during his work with the State Farms Corporation as a Marketing Officer in 1982 at Tamale, he was arrested and tortured by soldiers for allegedly misplacing a material belonging to a market woman. He said the soldiers sued their truncheons to hit his legs and feet several times, adding that he now walk with the aid of a pyramid foot disk.

Mr. Mensah said he never kept the belongings of the market women in his yard, adding that it was rather the watchman who discreetly kept those things making him pay the price for the crime he did not commit. He said he was arrested in 1983 after he stopped working with the State Farms and was then working with one Nana Wood, a timber merchant at Achimota, for allegedly hiding the said Nana Wood when he was wanted by the police.

He said about four military men severely beat him up, with one he mentioned as Vulture, burning his face with a lighted cigarette. Mr. Mensah said he suffered from the beatings, making him unable to continue his work and as a result to further his children's education. He pleaded with the commission for a redress.

Mr. Joshua Yaw Oduro, a trader from Assin Fosu said he was also arrested and beaten for selling a shirt and a bedsheet above the control price in June 1979.

He said he was kept in cells and released after four hours, adding that one Chief Inspector Owusu Ansah led some policemen to sell everything in his shop.

Mr. Oduro said the policeman later gave him 325 cedis for his goods that were worth 850,000 cedis.

The witness said he was 15 years old when one of his legs wsa amputated due to an illness, adding that, in spite of his incapacitation, he worked hard to earn a living.

He said what the police did to him worsen his plight since he lost his capital and became indebted.

The witness prayed the Commission to recommend for a redress and compensation.

He said while on detention, he was sent to the Achimota forest and molested so as to make him to confess to taking part in a coup plot. WO II Agyekum said amid death threats, he was often hit in the ribs and in the waist and was later brought to the BNI Headquarters.