The case of political detainees in Ghana
Some of the longest serving detainees among the names your journal published are all ex-Military Intelligence Service Personnel. They are S/Sgt. Ankrah, S/Sgt. Tanson, Sgt. Daniel Danso, Cpl. Boye-Okine, Cpl. Simon Amedzake.
It is known that they are being detained because at one time or another, they were part of the team that followed Kojo Tsikata and numbered among the names Kojo Airport. Tsikata took to court in an effort to prevent the Military Intelligence from carrying out its assigned duties.
That they are still in detention is due to the fact that the Special Adviser and Security Boss, Kojo Tsikata feels they must atone for what he went through under Limann, and also because ex- WOII Agbeyizah who is currently a personal aide of Kojo Tsikata and who was dismissed from the Military Intelligence for unauthorised disclosure of confidential information, identified the above as being the most active members of the Tsikata surveillance team.
Someone might ask how and why they allowed themselves to be arrested, when it was well known at the time that Rawlings and his group were out to get all Military Intelligence personnel. The reasons are that
(a) a number of them were in the Middle East serving with the UN Forces in Lebanon. Those of us who had managed to leave the country contacted them by phone and letters to advise them to decamp and seek asylum, but our very reliable information was that Maj- Gen. Arnold Quainoo, the Army Commander, assured them on his first visit to Lebanon after the December 31 coup that they would come to no harm and he would personally guarantee their safety.
Unfortunately, they were more persuaded by his assurances than by our letters. But I guess not many of them could bring themselves to live in a foreign land and wanted to go back after their tour. They were all arrested on their return to Ghana at the Accra
(b) Some were unlucky to have been arrested in Ghana, either in hiding or while trying to escape from Accra.
My information is that they have been cruelly treated and in several in- stances, denied access to their families. One of them, Cpl. Boye-Okine, has come in for special treatment because he was said to be a personal driver of the ex-Director and accused of having been sent to spy for the Director, a strange accusation since, until his return in early 1982, he was assigned to the command HQ of the UN Forces in Lebanon. Moreover, he has never been involved in operational intelligence duties, since he is only a driver.
I will be grateful if you could use Talking Drums to help publicise their plight in an effort to secure their release. If others who held more sensi- tive positions have been released, I see no reason why these soldiers have to be detained. It says much for the emotional immaturity of Kojo Tsikata that he seeks vengeance on those who have, for one reason or another, crossed swords with him in his long and chequered career of conspiracy against elected governments.
If those who come to power by coups, cannot realise that the Ghana Military Intelligence Service has existed to serve the state and the operatives deserve a more humane treatment than they have been subjected to, then God help anyone who finds himself in that unfortunate organisation now or in future. Since the 1966 coup, the MI has been truncated, disbanded and reformed. Its operatives beaten, tortured, jailed and sentenced to death.
MI personnel are not even safe when they leave the service. The late Major S.K. Acquah was murdered not because he dismissed striking GIHOC workers, he suffered the extreme penalty because he recommended the disciplining of Kojo Tsikata when the latter committed a serious service offence. Tsikata never forgave him and made sure that the Major knew that he (Tsikata) would seek his revenge one day! I know I speak for all MI operatives in jail in Ghana, recently released from detention, and in exile, when I say that if the price to pay for service in the MI include detention and the kind of treat- ment we have been subjected to since December 31, 1981, then NEVER AGAIN.
I hope the PNDC is big enough to realise that those they are holding in detention now do not deserve the punishment, and that they are demon- strating a myopic sense of justice by letting five low-ranking personnel suffer in jail because of their personal antipathies and the lust for revenge.
Ex-MI Officer in exile, West Germany
