Editorial News of Friday, 2 July 1999

Source: --

The Guide

When the Gun Rules

Captioned "When Gun Rules - AFRC, PNDC eras under attack" the Guide reports that the two most controversial political regimes in the nations' history, the AFRC and the PNDC era are likely t dominate public discussions into the next millennium.

The report says following the revelations of gross violations of human rights abuses and murders in the new book "When the Gun Rule, a soldiers testimony", a number of senior officers who were either part of or victims of those eras, have made their intentions clear to also document their experiences for history.

These intentions are said to have been uncovered at the launching of the book written by Col. Kofi Abaka Jackson who spent four and a half years incarcerated in various prisons after a fake trail on June 29, 1979.

According to the report Brigadier Nunoo-Mensah, a former member of the PNDC who resigned over the abduction and murder of the three judges and a retired army officer said "there is so much we need to document for posterity and I will also have to write my experiences and what happened in the PNDC era"

Col. Jackson?s book deals with what is described as the "worst Kangaroo trails and verdicts that was ever handed down to anyone in the history of Ghana."

According to the Guide the author describes how during the interrogation by the Pre- trail Investigation team (PIT) one of the investigators used a needle as an instrument of torture, and pricked him on the chest continuously while others slapped him on both sides of the face.

However, the report continues, the most astonishing and revealing aspect of the book is the prophetic statement made by the late Gen. I.K Acheampong to Gen. Odartey Wellington, Rear Admiral Amedumey and Air vice Marshal Boakye, all members of his NRC government but who turned against him in the palace coup that ushered in the SMC regime that "whatever happens to me would happen to you to you too."

Acheampong is also quoted in the book as having said, "whatever you do, wherever you go, somebody will come looking for you, either to thank you or to kill you"

GRi?/