.It was a pitched dark night on June 30, 1982. Aswas the norm in the early part of the so- calledrevolution, a curfew was in place throughout theland. So when the knock on the door becamepersistent, the household felt it could be a relativeneeding some assistance. The house-helpventured out. There was a man in northern smockwith others lurking in the dark. “I am looking formadam,” the man said. In her innocence, shereplied that the woman of the house was in. Shewas indeed breast feeding her baby, after leavingher in the care of the house- help the wholeday,while she went about her business of presidingover one of the high courts in Accra. There weresmiles on the house-help’s innocent face whenshe entered the living room and told the nursingmother, breast-feeding her baby that there wassomeone at the door looking for her. WhenMrs.Justice Cecelia Koranteng Addo ventured out, menin smock pushed her into a waiting vehicle. Theabduction process was so fast that by the time herhusband, Dr. Koranteng Addo, a lawyer of reputecould know what was happening, the wife hadbeen whisked away. The worried husband madedesperate attempts to alert the police and laterthe Chief Justice. But with curfew in place,venturing out was a risky business. By the time hemanaged to get the information through, itwascommon knowledge in town that three highcourtjudges and an army officer had been abducted inthe night. Their whereabouts were unknown. Bythe next morning, the news and all conversationin town was about the abduction of three judges -Justices Kwadwo Adjei Agyepong, Poku Sarkodieand Mrs. Cecelia Koranteng-Addowand a retiredMajor in the Ghana Armed Forces, who wastheAdministrative Manager of the Ghana IndustrialHolding Corporation (GIHOC), the industrialconglomerate owned by the state. The Chairmanof the military junta, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlingswas forced to broadcast to the nation. In thosedays, the state broadcaster, the GhanaBroadcasting Corporation, which radio andtelevision outlets provided the only link betweenbreaking news and the mass of the people.Whenthe leader of the so-called revolution, in hismilitary fatigue came on radio and television, heannounced that three high court judges and anarmy officer had been abducted by “enemies ofthe revolution”, and pledged government’sdetermination to find and rescue them.Apparently, Lance Corporal Amedeka, TonyTekpor and Dzandu, all soldiers, had taken theircaptives to the Bondase military firing range andexecuted them. The murderers carried along agallon of petrol with which they set fire to thebodies to destroy all evidence. By the time themurderers left the firing range with the bodies inflames, they were convinced that their captiveswould burn beyond recognition and identifyingthem would not be possible. God, Almighty, hashis own ideas though. It was June, the traditionalrainy season. But there was drought in the land.Somehow, it managed to rain that night, withinthe Bondase location only. The rainfall doused thefire. So when a shepherd tending his sheepchanced upon the bodies and reported thematter, a search team managed to identify all thefour victims. An official statement issued by thegovernment said the four bodies had been foundin the Accra Plains. For those of us allergic toGeography, the Accra Plains is the low-lyinggrassland along the coast, stretching fromSaltpond to Aflao. How four bodies could bethrown over all that expanse of land, was whatgave the game away. Following an outcry from allcorners of the country, the Provisional NationalDefence Council set up the Special InvestigationBoard headed by former Chief Justice Mr. JusticeAzu Crabbe to unravel the mystery. It turned outthat all the three judges were sitting on reviewcases brought by citizens aggrieved by thetreatment meted out to them by the ArmedForces Revolutionary Council that the militaryjunta formed after June 4 to administer thenation, and was headed by Flt. Lt. Rawlings.Thearmy officer, Major Sam Acquah, was the head ofadministration who had signed dismissal lettersfor some GIHOC workers, including JoachimAmartey Kwei, whose services were terminatedfor invading Parliament House and destroyingproperty. The SIB established that the abductionand murder was a plot hatched with theconnivance of members of the ProvisionalNational Defence Council. The Board found thatthe plot was master-minded by Capt. KojoTsikata, PNDC Member in charge of NationalSecurity. The PNDC though, rejected that aspectof the report. The culprits were in prison, when onJune 19, 1983, there was a jail-break at theNsawam Medium Prisons and the Ussher FortPrisons. L/Cpl Amedeka escaped from captivityand has since not been seen. But his threeaccomplices, Tony Tekpor, Dzandu and Hekli, aswell as ex-PNDC Members Amartey Kwei, wereexecuted by firing squad. From abduction toexecution, there were several twists and turns inthe saga. In the first place, all the threeaccomplices of Amedeka, were residing at theBoy’s Quarters of the Ridge residence of Flt. Lt.Rawlings and his wife, Nana Konadu AgyemanRawlings. It so happened that the key to thevehicle used in the abduction was kept on thedinning table of the Rawlingses’ residence. Themurder squad said that at the time they abductedand murdered the judges, they knew they werecarrying out operations on behalf of thegoverning PNDC. They indeed confessed tocarrying out similar operations, particularly in theVolta Region, where some well knownpersonalities were killed in mysteriouscircumstances. One of the notable characterswho allegedly fell at the hands of Amedeka’sdeath squad was Yeye Boy, a prominenttraditional spiritualists at Ho, who was killed andhis body displayed openlyat the Ho SportsStadium. One interesting outcome of the sagawas a tape said to have been recorded by thenChairman Rawlings himself, just before thegunsrained on Amartey Kwei, in which the penitentperson allegedly exonerated Kojo Tsikata. Thetape was said to have been handed over to Mr.Kojo Yankah, who edited the Daily Graphic at thetime. For the uninitiated, Kojo Yankah and hisrevolutionariesat the state newspaper hadchanged the name of the newspaper to thePeople’s Daily Graphic, apparently to reflect therevolutionary spirit of the time. When thecontents of the tape were published, the actincurred the wrath of the general public whoaccused the chairman of the PNDC of beinginsensitive, by extracting words from a penitentperson and getting them published. In the usualcomical means of doing things, the governmentordered the removal of Kojo Yankah fromGraphic, obviously as a result of theembarrassment the publishing of the contents ofthe tape had generated. The murder of the judgeshas become one of the black spots in the politicalevolution of this country.# remember us
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 08:08:33 +0000
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