The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) is through the RTI Law asking the National Security to produce the report of investigation it initiated on the arrest, detention and torture of ModernGhana journalists two years ago.
Modernghana’s Editor Emmanuel Ajafor in June 2019 in a Rambo-style was picked up by National Security operatives together with a reporter.
After his release, he revealed how he was tortured during interrogation amid slaps, handcuffing and tasered.
The National Security Ministry denied the allegations but said it was going to probe the allegations which it denied in the same statement it issued.
Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah at the time said Government was awaiting internal investigations by the National Security before officially commenting on the matter.
“…To the extent that we are having a number of discrepancies in the story that is being told, the primary agency to determine if these accounts are correct or some standard operating procedures or person’s rights were breached is the National Security Council Secretariat. Obviously, they may have to do their own internal enquiry to establish the truth or otherwise of the matter and make a determination of the next step. There isn’t much that has come out and I want to believe that it is an ongoing exercise and if they find anything untoward, then it can be escalated to the next level. ”
“For all these agencies, you start off from an internal enquiry. It is when the preliminary feedback that you are getting from that enquiry does not make sense and then you escalate to the next level…From what I have, their internal enquiry has not ended and that is why they have requested the medical report validation. In the end, we all have a better understanding of what happened”, he told Citi FM.
Next month will be two years since National Security started its investigations and nothing has been said about it creating room for doubts regarding the probe on Citi FM’s Caleb Kudah assault by the same National Security secretariat.
ASEPA has invoked the RTI law to request a report from the National Security on the outcome of their investigations.
“We write to you pursuant to the Right to Information Act 989, 2019, to request from the Ministry of National Security, a copy of the report of the investigations carried out by the National Security on the alleged abduction and torture of two Journalists from Modernghana, an online news portal here in Accra,” part of an official letter from ASEPA to the National Security Ministry reads.
Below is the letter from ASEPA to the National Security Ministry:
