A human rights advocate, former lawyer to ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, has revealed that, in the heat of the June 4th revolution, he tried to stop the ex-President from killings of the Generals, but Rawlings failed to listen.

He told The Defender that he even advised General A.A. Africa to leave the country, because there appeared to be no brakes on the state of madness at the time.

Mr Francis Kojo Smith, who said he had to flee into exile shortly after the December 31 coup d'etat because he consistently pointed out Rawlings' mistakes to him, made the revelation in an interview with The Defender in reaction to the ex-Presdient's alleged comment he made during an interview with CNN to the effect that "he did not regret the killings of the Generals". "In fact, it is only a crazy person who would take pride in such cruel inhuman behaviour, Mr Smith emphasized.

According to Mr Kojo Smith, the circumstances under which the killings took place were shameful, and those acts of murder must be condemned by all Ghanaians, no matter the political party one belonged to. "I myself would have been killed in 1992, if I had not run out of the country. Soldiers were detailed to look for me at my house and office, and an announcement was made on the radio that I was wanted."

He said Rawlings' protection was in the indemnity clauses of the transitional provisions of the 1992 Constitution, and suggested it was time for him to be told that those provision were unconscionable and inadmissible to Ghanaians a dignified people belonging to a civilized community of nations. "Anything that ex-President Rawlings has done which the public thinks is unlawful should be dealt with appropriately.

He must not be made to hide under cover of those antiquated clauses, even when he continually spits on the soul of the nation." He was of the opinion that the Transitional Provision should not stand in the way of any sound and unprejudiced interpretation of the laws in a way that would absolve the ex-President from any excesses or illegalities arising out of the operations of his junta.

"Moreover, the Transitional Provision and its so-called Indemnity Clauses, under international law, is no more applicable, and is categorically stated so, and obeyed by the international court." Smith would encourage all relatives and families that were affected by the killings of the Generals and other Ghanaians, without recourse to due process, to take up the matter to the International Court , since "people like us who are not directly affected by the killings could not do so", he explained.