5 EVIL Things Ft. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings Did During His Three Stints As Head Of State

The Killing Of Three High Court Judges And A Retired Army Officer

One of the worst blemishes on the record of Ghana as a nation, the killing of the three high court judges and the retired officer is one that inflames passions even to this very day.
Cecilia Koranteng Addo, Frederick Sarkodie, and Kwadjo Agyei Agyepong were the three justices of the high court, plus Major Sam Acquah. The four were abducted and then later found brutally murdered on June 30, 1982 – just over six months into the  second reign of the military dictator. The Major was accused of engineering the firing of some employees of the Ghana Industrial Holding Corporation (GIHOC) who were loyal to the government, and despite the appealing the case at the high court, their firings were upheld by Justice Koranteng Addo. All three judges were also sitting on cases in which people unlawfully imprisoned under the previous Rawlings military regime – the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) – were freed.
They were abducted from their homes, sent to a firing range to be executed, and the bodies burnt after. One account claims the female justice was not dead whilst being burnt, and ‘got up in flames to chase her killers’. That was how gruesome the whole incident was.
Jerry Rawlings have always denied any involvement in the killings, but nevertheless they happened under his watch and was enabled by the inherent lawlessness of a military dictatorship. There is no doubt such an action also required high level authorisation, if not from the Chairman then from someone very close to him in the corridors of power.
Despite his denials, the testimony of Corporal Matthew Adabuga before the National Reconciliation Commission raises a lot of questions over who exactly ordered the hit. Adabuga was one of the masterminds of the 31st December coup that brought Rawlings back to power after he voluntarily handed over after in 1979 – and he told the NRC that Rawlings knew and approved of the brutal killings – alleging that he took a sip of champagne when the news was delivered to him that the deed was done.