Mr. Emmanuel Yaw Blessie, a former Deputy Superintendent of Police, on Tuesday told the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) that he was arrested and detained for two years without trial during the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) era.

He said soldiers who arrested him on September 6, 1983 at 0200 hours at Wa alleged that he had collected bribe in a gold case he was investigating.

Mr Blessie said though no formal dismissal letter was issued to him, he heard his name being mentioned on radio together with a number of senior police officers as having been dismissed a few hours before his arrest.

He said he was neither formerly retired, dismissed, charged for his arrest nor paid any compensation.

Mr Blessie appealed to the NRC to properly place him at par with his colleagues, properly retired and paid all his benefits.

He said he enlisted into the Police Service in 1961. He was the Eastern Region Crime officer in 1983 before he was posted to Wa in the Upper West Region to establish a crime office there.

Mr Blessie said the soldiers said they were driving him to Accra where was allegedly wanted, but they deposited him at the Navrongo Prisons.

He said he spent one week there after which he was sent to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) in Accra where he spent another one week.

Mr Blessie said he was sent to the Usher Fort prisons where he spent two years before he was discharged in 1984.

Whilst in detention he called on Mr Okudjeto and Mr Obeng Menu to serve as his counsel but an Executive Instrument of 1984 said he was being detained in the interest of national security.

Mr Blessie said he felt helpless after the Executive Instrument was passed but on August 5, 1984, there was a publication that people who were in prison without any charge should be released.

He said while in prison, the then Inspector General of Police asked him to work on a murder case he was investigating before his detention but he refused saying he was thinking about his wife and children.

Mr Blessie said his detention had brought hardship and poverty to his family.

Bishop Palmer-Buckle, a member of the Commission, commended him for his courage and called on Ghanaians to demand that the right thing be done when their rights are being trampled upon.