The hanky-panky is over. After over four years, the trial of the suspects in the dastardly butcher of Alhani Issa Mobila in the Northern Regional begins in an Accra high Court for the first time, today.

Late Issa Mobila, former Northern Regional Chairman of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), was brutally murdered by soldiers whilst in their custody. Soldiers had taken him from the police, after he had voluntarily responded to a police invitation. Human rights reports emanating from the United States government had fingered the brutal murder of Mobila as the only politically motivated murder in recent times.

The trial, which would be before a jury, is to be held at Court 5, presided over by Justice Senyo Dzamefeh. Already, about seven witnesses, including a pathologist and policemen are said to have arrived in Accra from Tamale, ready to appear in court to testify. The Enquirer newspaper gathered that the trial is coming off, after a long tussle between the Attorney-General and the military command for the release of the suspects, who are now in custody.

Alhaji Mobila, who had campaigned for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2004 elections, was found tortured to death at the Tamale Kamina barracks on December 9, 2004 after he had responded to a police invitation.

An autopsy performed on the body of the deceased revealed that he had been tortured to death, with broken ribs, collapse of his left lung and haemothorax, as well as many other visible injuries.

The autopsy was performed by Dr. Kofi Adomako Boateng of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH). The three suspects in the case, Corporal Yaw Appiah, Private Eric Modzaka, and Private Seth Goka, first appeared before the Tamale High Court, presided over by Mr. Justice George Suureebari, in July 2005. They were represented by George Aborgah.

The case was subsequently ordered to be transferred to Accra, Nothing has happened since then. Even though both Lt. Col. William Omane-Agyekum, the Commanding Officer of the Sixth Infantry Battalion (a.k.a Kamina Barracks) at the time of the murder, and the Director of Public Relations of the Ghana Armed Forces, Col. Emmanuel W. Nibo, told the Enquirer the case was in court at various times, checks at the registries of the courts in Accra in the past proved otherwise. The suspects were never sent to court.

Alhaji Mobila’s murder, which occurred under the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, was the first civilian murder in a military barracks, in the history of Ghana under a democratically y elected civilian administration.