The bodies of eight senior military officers, including three former heads of state, who were executed in the heat of the revolution in 1979 have been exhumed and their bodies deposited at the 37 Military Hospital where they are undergoing a process of identification, the Executive Committee on Exhumation and Burial of Executed Generals, has said in an official statement issued in Accra on Tuesday.

A combined team of police, prisons, military and BNI personnel "successfully exhumed" the remains of the officers from the Adoagyri Government cemetery on August 8 and August 9.

The statement signed by Air Marshall M.A. Out (RTD), Chairman of the Committee, read: "The exercise which took two days was carried out under the command and action of Colonel J.M. Wahdhawain, the Pathologist of the 37 Military Hospital and a member of the committee."

Marshall Otu said the exercise was a first step of the assignment given to the committee by President John Agyekum Kufuor.

The officers were General Ignatius Kuti Acheampong, Lt. Gen. Frederick Akuffo and Lt. Gen. Akwasi Afrifa, all former heads of state.

The others were Air Marshall Yaw Boakye, Major General Emmanuel Utuka, Major General Robert Kotei, Rear Admiral Joy Amedume and Colonel Roger Felli.

They were executed after death sentences were pronounced on them during secret trials when junior officers and other ranks ousted the Supreme Military Council and installed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council under the chairmanship of former President Jerry Rawlings.

The statement said Marshall Otu presented the coroner's forms, which authorised him to exhume the bodies.

It said the Chief of Adoagyri, Nana Adukorkor and the Chaplain General of the Armed Forces performed customary and Christian rites respectively.

Relatives of the executed senior officers had petitioned the government to release the bodies of their loved ones to them for proper burials.