Come tomorrow, Tuesday November 18, 2003, the deputy chairman of the AFRC, Major Kojo Boakye Djan (rtd) would appear before the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) concerning the events of the 1979 June 4th Uprising, and its alleged attendant human rights abuses.
The deputy Chairman, who is believed to have spearheaded the uprising to release Fl Lt Jerry John Rawlings from captivity in 1979, is expected to, among others, throw light on the decision to execute the eight Army Generals, as well as the several tortures, killings, trials, confiscation of assets and other human rights abuses.
Major Boakye-Djan who had initially told Journalists that he did not intend to petition the NRC during his visit to the country in August this year, is believed to have done so following a counter-claim by Mr and Mrs Rawlings that he was a coward who ran away to go and hide at his girlfriend’s home at Achimota when the guns smoked on the day of the June, uprising in 1979.
The Rawlings’ claimed that contrary to Boakye Djan’s disclosure that the execution of the Generals was a collective decision by the Council, Rawlings was not part of it. But Boakye Djan says the entire Council members decided to execute the Generals for overthrowing an established constitutional order.
It’s believed that it is the attempt to distance Rawlings from the decision taken to execute the three former Heads of State and five military Generals that has compelled Major Boakye Djan to petition the Commission.
Source: GhanaWeb
