Ex-Corporal Charles Nkrabea Opoku Ware, now a tae-kwan-do instructor with a security firm, said Kwamena Ahwoi, then co-ordinator of the tribunal, openly declared
his anger at him after interviewing other panel members who were then on recess
at Akosombo.
Then 23 years old, Ex-Corporal Opoku Ware said he quoted PNDC Law 24, which, he said,
enjoined the tribunal not to declare a person guilty whenever there was one uncorroborated evidence.
He said after he had told Ahwoi his reason, he became annoyed and angrily told him
that he was surprised that he a soldier, was pardoning Pianim,
who was a security threat, a financier of coups and would turn around to stage
another coup.
Ex-Corporal Opoku
Ware said soon after that Ahwoi angrily left and the
panel members packed their bags and returned to
Under normal circumstances,
death sentence could not be carried out if panel members were not unanimous on
the decision, Ex-Corporal Opoku Ware said. He said
when he arrived in
Ex-Corporal Opoku
Ware said he consulted ASP Antwi Diabour,
the oldest panel member, who advised him not to attend the tribunal hearing on
the day of the judgement. Ex-Corporal Opoku Ware said
he went into hiding at his wife's house after the judgement, adding that ASP Diabour informed him after the judgement that soldiers had
been asked to shoot him on sight.
He said he used his mother in
law's 23,000 cedis, and together with his wife escaped to neighbouring La Cote
He stayed in exile for 17 years
and on his return he was given his discharge book from the Armed Forces after
which he made efforts to get compensation.
He was declared Absent Without Official Leave
(AWOL).
Samuel Addae
Amoako, a former National Organiser of the People's
National Party (PNP), prayed the Commission for the removal of the Indemnity
Clause in the Constitution. He said he was invited by a long time friend to
join the PNDC just after the 31 December Coup.
However, Amoako
condemned the coup and the personalities who executed it and made a public
announcement denouncing the coup the day after it was launched. He said the
"coup plotters moved to kill me" adding that a few days after the
dust of the coup had settled, soldiers moved into his house and shot and wounded
him in the groin.
Good Samaritans, including Kweku
Baako Junior, the late Tommy Thompson, Kwesi Pratt
Junior and one Stanley Amattoe came to his rescue.
After unsuccessful attempts to take refuge at the residence of the British High
Commissioner he was rushed to Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for the dressing of
his wound.
Amoako said soldiers came to the
Hospital to look for him to kill him, but the ingenuity of one of the health
personnel who attended to him saved him. He later left the country, but
indicated he had information that Kwesi Pratt was
behind the soldiers' search for him at the
Amoako condemned the December 31
Revolution and its leader in very strong language and prayed the Commission for
the return of his brand new Mercedes Benz car. He also requested for
compensation for his niece who, he said, was raped many times by one Kwesi Aidoo, a commando, in his
house, which was used by cadres. He said Aidoo
eventually made her pregnant.
Amoako also said his house must also
be rehabilitated. George Obeng, a tailor from
Mankessim, corroborated the story of Madam Afia Samiah, a baker at Akim Oda, who had earlier told the Commission of the seizure by
soldiers of 400 bags of flour she had bought for a bakers' co-operative.
She had told the Commission that
she was stripped naked, booted and her vehicle set afire. Obeng,
who was Madam Samiah's nephew and was also manhandled
by the soldiers when they seized the flour at Weija
Barrier, complained of sight problems and said he had become hypertensive from
the harrowing experience.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 16 April
2003- Ex-Corporal Alhassan Adama
Akati on Tuesday described as untrue evidence by
Ex-Warrant Officer Joseph Kwabena Adjei Boadi, former
member of the erstwhile Provisional National Defence Council, that he (Adjei Boadi) personally did not shoot, but ordered the shooting
of six people at the Border Guards Headquarters after the abortive coup of
corporal Halidu Giwa in
1983.
Ex-Corporal Akati
said he saw Adjei Boadi who was then wearing a
helmet, gun them down himself. He said five of them
had been with him in the guardroom and Adjei-Boadi
had ordered them out.
Ex-Corporal Akati,
a member of the guard-team of the late President Hilla
Limann, told the National Reconciliation Commission
(NRC) that it was also untrue that Adjei-Boadi and
his men fought and overpowered Giwa's team, which
staged the abortive coup, at Broadcasting House.
He said at the time of the
arrival of Adjei Boadi at the Broadcasting House,
none of Giwa's men were there, and the coup would
have succeed if Lt. Col Ekow Dennis had made the
radio announcement instead of the premature one of Giwa.
The coup would have succeeded if
they had located Lt. Col. Dennis or any senior officer had given them their
support when the PNDC countered their announcement. Ex-Corporal Akati said he had hated the revolution of the PNDC right
from its inception in December 1981, and had been part of the government troops
that resisted Flt. L.t Jerry John Rawlings, the
Chairman of the PNDC, on the eve of the coup on
Ex-Corporal Akati
said he went on a peacekeeping mission in
Ex-Corporal Akati
said he was sent to the BNI Headquarters, cautioned and sent to the Usher Fort
Prison and was "chained like a monkey for three days". One of his
hands was freed when he would have a meal or attended nature's call at the same
place.
While in detention at the Usher
Fort, his colleagues organised and he came out of jail, staged a coup to oust
the PNDC, but their coup was foiled because of the premature radio announcement
by Giwa.
He was arrested and sent to the
Castle and was interrogated by one Lt Kusi on his
role in the abortive coup, but he insisted that he had always been against the
"Lt. Kusi
made a sign at my back and soldiers numbering about 15 began beating my
ribs," Ex-Corporal Akati said, and added that
later security personnel took him to the end of the Castle, where he was
subjected to another round of severe beating after Flt Lt Kojo
Lee had also interrogated him.
Ex-Corporal Akati
said after the beatings he was brought back to the Castle Guardroom, from where
he said detainees were picked and fired. He said when it got to his turn and he
was being taken out to be executed, he overpowered the soldier taking him along
and took possession of his weapon.
Captain Kojo
Tsikata, who he said was upstairs with Chairman Rawlings, walked down and asked
him to surrender the weapon, assuring him of security and he obliged. He was
sent back to a special guardroom, with instructions to be given neither food
nor water for two weeks, but one of the guards surreptitiously took him to the
toilet and gave him some food.
Peter Nanfuri,
then BNI Director saw him one day at the Castle very weak and he promised to
help him. He was transferred to the BNI and later arrainged
before a tribunal, and later he spent nine and half years in detention.
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Mankessim (Central Region)
Oscar Kweku Appiah, assemblyman
for Edumadze/Twafo electoral area of Mankessim, who
made the appeal, said the long absence of a substantive DCE would compound
precarious problems facing the district.
Appiah said the Central Regional
Minister who has been tasked with oversight responsibility for the district
until was being over burdened, as he has no deputy to assist him in the
performance of his official duties.
"The longer the appointment
takes, the more development in our district suffers. We need a District Chief
Executive to lead us to move the district forward," the assemblyman said.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 16 April
2003-Cameron Duodu, a Veteran Journalist in the
United Kingdom, on Wednesday denied involvement in the arrest and executions of
seven top senior military officers after the June 4, 1979 Uprising.
A message he sent to the Ghana
News Agency (GNA) in a reaction to a report from the National Reconciliation
Commission (NRC) said: "I have read with shock and utter disbelief a
statement that Squadron George Tagoe is reported to
have made to the NRC, in which he mentions me as one "of 13 people, who
were behind the arrest and executions of the seven top senior military officers
after the 4 June 1979 Uprising."
Duodu said: "If Squadron Leader Tagoe did indeed make such a statement, then he is under a
delusion of some sort. Obviously, anyone can make a mistake and I do hope
Squadron Leader Tagoe will accept that he has made
one in this instance and retract his untrue statement."
He warned that if Squadron
Leader Tagoe refused to retract then he was
challenging him to repeat the allegation outside the NRC, where it might not be
covered by what the lawyers call "privilege" and for him to be
challenged in a lawsuit.
"If Squadron Leader Tagoe refuses to retract his allegation, or to repeat it
outside the NRC, I shall have no alternative but to petition the NRC to commit
him to prison for perjury, in that he has lied about me before a Judicial
Commission."
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Members of the Ashanti Region
branch of the Club called on the NEC members to keep faith with party members
by swiftly resolving to patch their differences and work in harmony with each
other.
This was contained in a
statement issued by the club and read by its secretary, Stephen Tambe Gyan, at a press conference
in
"Failure of the national
leaders to promptly heed to our plea to forge unity amongst themselves, we the Gaskia club will be justified in perceiving them as
traitors who deceived us to vote for them only to destroy the NDC," the
club warned.
The club advised members and
sympathisers of the party against aligning themselves to personalities and
factions within the NDC. It was the conviction of members of the club that if
NDC members remained neutral and refrained from the habit of demonstrating
their support for certain personalities "and the so-called factions",
the division within the party would cease.
The club also expressed its
opposition to the idea of some members of the party resorting to the use of the
media to launch attacks on other members of the NDC. "The NDC's constitution has provisions for redress of grievances
and these internal channels and avenues should be explored for resolution of
all party differences", the club said.
The club members were not happy
that since the NEC members were elected they had confined themselves to
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A statement issued and signed by
the Communications Director of the Network, Yaw Sarfo
Kantanka, said: "this certainly is not the time
for idle practices and effusions which will bring in their wake, rancour and
divisive tendencies."
This was in reaction to recent
pronouncements by some political party functionaries and social commentators
concerning the appointment and inclusion of
The statement said the Network
was disappointed at such pronouncements that sought to create the impression
that the President was favouring people from
The statement said it was
regrettable that certain social commentators "have been so myopic in their
thinking that they fail to appreciate the efforts of the President to include
members of other political parties who are also not people from his tribe in
his government."
It noted that there were many
competent Ashantis who under normal circumstances,
should have been in the present administration but were out for the simple
reason that people may not have the cause to accuse the President of
surrounding himself with his tribesmen.
"The recent ministerial
changes bear testimony to this fact", the statement said. It appealed to
the President to continue to work with any competent person who in his opinion
could deliver the goods.
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Kumasi (Ashanti Region) 16 April
2003- The Kumasi Campus of the University College of Education branch of the
Tertiary Education Confederacy (TESCON) of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has
said the successes chalked by the party in recent by-elections showed the
degree of confidence people have in the government.
"The five by-elections won
by the NPP show the goodwill and support of the people for the policies of the
government". This was contained in a press statement issued by the TESCON
and signed by its organising secretary, Martin Yeboah in
The statement, however,
cautioned NPP supporters not to allow the successes to make them complacent and
rather work harder towards resounding victory in the 2004 general elections.
The TESCON congratulated Richard
Quarm, the NPP's Member of
Parliament (MP) for Gomoa East and the four others
elected through the by-elections. The statement said the executive and entire
membership of the TESCON were proud of President John Agyekum Kufuor's untiring efforts at bringing peace to Cote
d'Ivoire and appealed to him to use his rich experience to promote peace in
other war-torn countries in the West African sub-region.
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Kumasi (Ashanti Region) 16 April
2003- Dr Kofi Asare, Ashanti Regional Director of
Health Services, on Tuesday called on individuals, opinion leaders and
organisations to assist the government in enforcing environmental protection
laws.
He said children were being
exposed to unhygienic practices, dangerous chemicals, unsafe drinking water and
injuries. Dr Asare, who was speaking at the launching
of this year's World Health Day in
He said: "The economic
benefit of creating a healthy environment for children is only a fraction of
the cost of neglect, and yet we choose to do the wrong things and pay the
cost." Dr Asare said according to World Health
Organisation report, about 500,000 children between 0-14 years died annually
from environmentally related diseases such as acute respiratory tract
infections, diarrhoea and malaria world-wide.
He advised parents to ensure
sound hygienic practices, refrain from social vices and to serve as models for
their children. A competition on healthy environmental practices was organised
for schools in the
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Accra (Greater Accra) 16 April
2003- The Ghana Wildlife Society in collaboration with the Naval base at Tema
on Tuesday returned a Green or Edible Turtle into the Atlantic Ocean after
being it had been in illegal custody of a herbalist.
The exercise was in line with
the Wild Animal Preservation Act, 1961 (Act 43, section (1) that bars
individuals to hunt, capture or destroy any endangered species of animal.
Gerald Boakye,
Marketing Officer of Ghana Wildlife Society, who briefed newsmen after the
exercise said the turtle was seized from a herbalist
in
The herbalist was apprehended
and handed over to the police for illegally possessing the turtle and according
to the law, offenders would be fined two hundred cedis
or be jailed for not more than six months.
Boakye noted that since the turtle was
an endangered spicies and should not be in the
custody of any person unless its original habitat, they could not breach the
law so they contacted the Naval Base at Tema for an assistance to safely
dispose of it.
He said the Navy welcomed the
idea and safely disposed of the creature at deep sea and that it should not be
left at the shore for it to fall prey to the fishermen. Nat Essey,
Chief Petty Officer one (CPO1) who escorted the delegation in the Gemini Craft
(a Naval Safe Boat) said the turtle was disposed at between 13-15 nautical
miles to ensure that a reasonable habitat had been secured for it.
CPO1 Essey
lauded the effort of the Ghana Wildlife Society adding, "if everyone could recognize the importance of wild life,
they would not destroy such creatures indiscriminately".
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The construction will bring to
three the number of Radiotherapy centres in the country. Already, there is a
Radiotherapy and Nuclear medicine centre at Korle Bu, which in addition to the
treatment of various types of cancers also provides diagnostic services in the
health sector.
A second one at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in
He said the radiotherapy
facility was accessible to the poor since the minimum cost of breast cancer
treatment is two million cedis compared to 15,000 dollars for the same kind of
treatment in the
Prof Fobih
disclosed that the Ministry of Environment and Science through Ghana Atomic
Energy Commission (GAEC) and Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research had
developed a technology for the production of microbial pesticide for the
control of Malaria and Schistosomaisis (Bilharzia) vectors.
He said Sterile Insect Technique
(SIT) for the control of insect pest was used together with impregnated screens
and target technology to suppress about 80 per cent of tsetse fly population in
11 communities in Savelugu-Nanton District.
The Minister said in
collaboration with the Noguchi Memorial Institute a simple, cheap and more
sensitive diagnostic process was developed for Tuberculosis. "The early
detection of TB will lead to a better cure," he added.
He said over 60 tonnes of medical
products, including gauze, cotton wool, and disposable syringes were sterilized
using gamma radiation for local industries. He said the gamma radiation method,
which is cost effective made the industries more competitive on the global
market. He said radiation workers in the health, industry, research and
teaching were monitored to ensure that they were not harmed by their
operations.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 16 April
2003- More than 220 exploration and small-scale mining operations were
registered last year and issued with environmental permits to bring sanity into
their operations and ensure effective environmental monitoring, Professor
Dominic Fobih, Minister of Lands Forestry, announced
on Tuesday.
Addressing Journalists at the
"Meet the Press Series in
Prof. Fobih
attributed the high level of success to a sound environmental awareness created
among the mining companies. In addition, the enforcement of reclamation bonds,
which made it mandatory for mining companies to make deposits against recovery
of degraded land in cases of default, had also achieved a remarkable level of
success.
Prof. Fobih
said with the enforcement of the bonds 1.5 million dollars and 240 million
cedis were posted in cash and 4.8 million dollars in Bank Guarantees and
Insurances as reclamation bonds in the last two years.
The Minister said to promote
sustainable investment and development, all development projects would have to
be sanctioned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which would
guarantee their environmental suitability.
He said with the assistance of
the EPA about 180 such projects were registered in the last two years for
environmental assessment, out of which 60 were granted permits. "In
addition, 50 existing industries were registered and given permits during the
period under review," the Minister said. Prof. Fobih
said the final draft of the National Environmental Quality Standards
Regulations for the control of environmental pollution had been prepared.
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Offinso (Ashanti Region) 16 April 2003-
Nana Wiafe Akenten III, Offinsohene, has advised chiefs to always promote unity,
peace and development in their areas and refrain from acts that could tarnish
the image and credibility of the chieftaincy institution.
"The spate of disputes and
wrangling in some traditional areas do not only give wrong impression about the
dignity and credibility of the institution but also deny the people the
requisite peace and development," he said.
Nana Wiafe
Akenten gave the advice when Nana Opoku
Asiedu II, the new Kokotehene,
swore the oath of allegiance to him at Offinso on
Monday. Nana Opoku Asiedu,
52, is the Vice Principal of the
He succeeded his uncle, Nana Yankyera Mpranee, who died about
three months ago.
Kokote is a commercial suburb of Offinso. Nana Wiafe Akenten was not happy that some kingmakers and queenmothers after presenting candidates to be installed as
chiefs turn round again to mobilise people against them on trivial issues.
Such acts, he said, "make
mockery of the chieftaincy institution and do not promote peace, harmony or
stability". Nana Opoku Asiedu
pledged to offer good counselling and leadership qualities that would help
improve the living standards of the people and called for the support and
co-operation of the people.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 16 April
2003- The Reverend Dr Robert Aboagye-Mensah, General
Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG), on Tuesday appealed to those
who preach in commercial vehicles to be more humane in spreading the gospel to
avoid disrupting the attention of drivers and passengers.
"As Christians, we are to
share our faith by preaching the gospel wherever we are, but we should present
it in a decent way and in an appropriate atmosphere to avoid disturbing people
and creating discomfort," he said.
Rev. Aboagye-Mensah,
who is the new Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana, was
expressing his views on complaints by the public about the inconveniences
created by such preachers.
He told the Ghana News Agency
(GNA) that it was sad such preachers created discomfort for the very people
they intended to reach out to. The Reverend Minister said such preachers could
rather adopt a one-on-one approach in reaching out to people in vehicles rather
than shouting and disturbing them.
He said even though passengers
in moving vehicles were "captive audience", the extent of disturbing
them and drivers alike should be looked at. Rev. Aboagye-Mensah
said commercial drivers should be bold to ask such preachers and drug peddlers
to stop operating in their vehicles "if their actions continue to disturb
public".
He also advised the preachers to
conduct themselves in a manner worthy of Christians and observe good hygienic
practice, and stop collecting money from the people. In a related development,
Rev. Aboagye-Mensah said in an Easter message that
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ reminded Christians that with God,
there was no situation that was hopeless.
Rev Aboagye-Mensah
said Christians might meet all kinds of difficulties and challenges in man's
life as Jesus experienced on his way to
"The Lord has rescued us from
the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his son, Jesus
Christ," he added. The Reverend Minster also expressed the hope that as
the Homowo festival approaches after Easter, the
cordial relationship that exists between the Ga
Traditional Council and churches would be maintained.
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