Accra, April 20, GNA – Madam Safiatu Abduallai, a Witness at the National Reconciliation Commission, on Tuesday could not hold her tears as she told the Commission that a soldier stabbed her father Abdullai Moshi, to death in 1982.
Her story was that a soldier who took advantage of the curfew, imposed after the December 31 1981 coup, and killed her father who resisted being robbed during the curfew hours at Kronum, near Kumasi. The soldier, whom she said she later got to know as Corporal Azumah, was never prosecuted even though the family made a report to the Suame Police, and the soldiers also followed up to assist investigations. Madam Abdullai said her late father, an ex service man, was working as watchman for a store.
She said her father had rented part of a building in which they stayed to one Mr Bonsu to be used for the store, in which he also served as the watchman.
Witness said in the during the curfew, the soldier came to the store, and after telling his father to bring out a paper to prove that he was the watchman, he ordered the household to enter into the rooms.
Witness said the family heard the soldier asking her father to bring out a bag, and a scuffle ensued as the father refused to bring the bag in addition to the initial request of the watchman’s document. The father soon shouted for help, calling the name of one Braimah, but she came out to see the motionless body of her father lying on a bench.
She said the family had to sit beside the dead body till the curfew period was over at six in the morning.
In the morning the family found a knife still stacked in her father’s stomach, and the intestines gushed out.
A report to a military detachment in the area identified the soldier as one Corporal Azumah, but neither the military nor the Suame Police to whom a report was made prosecuted the corporal.
Another Witness, Mr Zakari Dagomba, from Winiso, near Atwima said in 1982, one Sgt. Dapaah led some soldiers in the company of David Amankwa, Kwesi Effah, and Asare, all members of the then People’s Defence Committee (PDC) to the Winiso Market and sold traders’ wares at “controlled price”.
The Witness, who said he was a butcher, said the soldier subjected him to a drill, and beat him up for selling his meat above controlled price. He said the soldiers paraded him in the town, made him crawl for about one and half hours on a road covered with gravel.
He said a soldier hit him on the ribs for being slow, as they marched him to the chief’s palace where they continued molesting him.
They stopped when he complained of the pains in his ribs to the chief who intervened for him.
Mr Dagomba said, on return to the market he found that the soldiers had sold the meat he left behind at “controlled price”, and taken the money away.
Source: GhanaWeb
