I can vouch for the innocence of Rawlings in Judges’ murder - NPP's Obiri Boahen

Former President John Rawlings 

The Deputy General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Obiri Boahen has cautioned Ghanaians to stop accusing former President Jerry John Rawlings and his wife having any hand in the murder of judges and an army Major, MyNewsGH.com has filed.

Nana Obiri Boahen who was in the news recently for loose talk has advised the Rawlings' to desist from reacting to radio commentaries and the evil ploy by others to soil his solid integrity as history judges him better.

Speaking on Kumasi-based Hello FM monitored by MyNewsGh.com, the vociferous NPP scribe defended the integrity of ex-President Rawlings and stated without mincing words that, the military cum civilian leader had no hand in the murder of the judges. He asked Ghanaians to stop trying to implicate the Rawlings’ in the hideous scandal.

“I lived in the country around those moments, I have read the SIB [Special Investigative Board] report, I have read Prof. Adu Boahen’s account and a host of other literatures. No where did they say Rawlings was involved in the murder of the judges,” he said.

“I can confidently say that Rawlings and his wife had no hand in the judges’ murder, neither were they aware prior to their execution,” he said.

Details of the Murder

On 30 June 1982, the judges – Justices Kwadwo Adjei Agyepong, Poku Sarkodie and Mrs. Cecelia Koranteng-Addow – and a retired Major in the Ghana Armed Forces, were abducted and branded “enemies of the revolution” under MR Rawlings’ PNDC junta.
Lance Corporal Amedeka, Tony Tekpor and Dzandu, all soldiers, took their captives to the Bondase military firing range and executed them. The murderers carried along a gallon of petrol with which they set fire to the bodies to destroy all evidence, as MyNewsGH.com reported.

But it rained that night, so, the bodies did not burn as the murderers had wanted.

Following a public outcry, the PNDC set up the Special Investigation Board (SIB) headed by former Chief Justice Mr Justice Azu Crabbe, to unravel the mystery.

It turned out that all the three judges were reviewing cases brought to them by aggrieved citizens in connection with the treatment meted out to them by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council junta, which Mr Rawlings led in carrying out his 4 June 1979 coup
The SIB established that the abduction and murders were a plot hatched with the connivance of members of the PNDC. The Board found that the plot was master-minded by Capt. Kojo Tsikata, PNDC member in charge of National Security. The PNDC rejected that aspect of the report and let Capt. Tsikata and four others off the hook for lack of evidence.

The remaining four of the nine suspects were jailed. When, on 19 June 1983, there was a jail-break at the Nsawam Medium Prisons and the Ussher Fort Prisons, L/Cpl Amedeka escaped from captivity and has since not been seen. But his three accomplices, Tony Tekpor, Dzandu and Hekli, as well as ex-PNDC member Amartey Kwei, were executed by firing squad.

Mr Rawlings has always insisted that before Amartey Kwei was executed, he confessed, at the stakes, to falsely accusing Mr Tsikata of involvement.

Rawlings Defends himself

Mr Jerry Rawlings in a meeting with the student body of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) last Saturday said history, as told by the recent JoyNews documentary, has been skewed to smear him.
According to him, If he was that blood thirsty as the documentary is posing him to be, on the 15th of May 1979, he could have ignited the thing and left it.

when people were calling for blood, I could have just let go and let people do the killings.

“How do I come back in the 80s when things have cooled down and say I want to kill judges? It was a terrible thing some of our people did. How do you choose how to knock me down without going too low? I have enough true stories about these characters,”

On Saturday, 13 October 2018, veteran journalist Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako, editor of the New Crusading Guide newspaper also stated that he was befuddled by former president Rawlings’ “noisy” attack on Multimedia’s ‘Who Killed The Judges?’ documentary.

In his opinion, the Special Investigation Board (SIB) that probed the 1982 murder of the three high court judges and the retired army officer under Chairman Rawlings’ Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) regime, directly implicated the former military leader in its report but he, for decades, “let it go”.