The five military personnel caught up in the alleged coup plot to overthrow the ruling NPP Government sold their conscience and betrayed the trust reposed in them, Major General Nicholas Andoh, the Chief of Staff of the Ghana Armed Forces has told an Accra High Court where the accused are standing trial for offences of high treason.
According to him, the soldiers were trained to be professionals, however, “their actions amounted to selling their conscience and betraying the trust reposed in them.”
Major General Andoh, who is the Second Witness, was responding to questions under cross-examination by E.A. Avordoagbor, counsel for Dr. MacPalm, who asked the witness whether it was his evidence that the soldiers who were allegedly complicit, were not professional because they failed to report the alleged coup plot to their superiors.
The lawyer asked about his qualification as a Major General and the fact that he told the court he had relied on the video and audio evidence presented to him by military operatives that were planted to monitor the activities of the alleged coup plotters.
The lawyer also questioned the witness on the authenticity of the videos and audios presented by the informants, and the possibility of those materials being tampered with.
Major General Andoh told the court that he is an infantry officer and has had all the necessary training requisite for professional development as well as training in Defence Intelligence.
Touching on the authenticity of the videos and audios, the witness told the court that the videos submitted to him correlated with the physical evidence that were seen when the accused persons were arrested.
“When there is a video about a sketch that is being prepared for attack of certain areas and in the video BB (Bright Alan Debrah) indicated that he was going to give it to his boss and on September 20, 2019 that sketch was found in Dr. MacPalm’s drawer, there is no way to question the authenticity of the video. If there is a video of Dr. MacPalm lamenting that he has given GH¢2,000 to Mr. Gershon Akpa, a civilian employee of the Ghana Armed Forces to procure AK47 assault rifle and Mr. Akpa is invited on September 23, 2019 and he confirms that Dr. MacPalm gave him the GH¢2,000 and because he could not provide the AK47 he had to return the money. If there is a video showing the production process of pistols and IEDs with Dr. MacPalm and Sule inspecting, and the IEDs are physically discovered in the X-ray lab of the Citadel Hospital, then there is no reason to think that the video had been tampered with because the videos and physical are the same,” the witness told the court.
The military officer said “My Lord, I have indicated to this court that what was seen on the videos was seen physically on the ground. What we saw in the video and what we saw on the ground, there was no doubt. The technical experts from the School of Languages who transcribed the audios also established the correlation. The WhatsApp conversations that were extracted were in tandem with the activity and all the reports that came from BNI did not leave any doubt about the authenticity of the audios and videos.”
Take Action Ghana
Mr. Avordoagbor then touched on Dr. MacPalm’s organisation – Take Action Ghana (TAG) and said it was “an instrument of mass mobilisation with a purpose of forming a political party.”
The witness disagreed and said “there are statements on the WhatsApp communication to the effect that the seeds of the Arab Spring had been sewn awaiting a trigger. There were clear statements of coup d’etat, revolution and very violent words which attracted caution by Dr. MacPalm of infiltrators taking note for which reason an executive platform was established for purpose of reserving the use of those insidious languages and denying the generality of TAG membership from access to that sort of information.”
Lawyer: I am putting it to you that all the WhatsApp messages you submitted indicated that A1 (Dr. MacPalm) is a democrat, a trained medical officer who believes in the tenets of democracy and change of government by lawful means.
Witness: It is false. Dr. MacPalm mindful of the criminal connotation of his activities strived to acquire weapons and violent equipment surreptitiously and all the activities that followed from the time that he declared his intension to overthrow the government do not point to democratic practices.”
Lawyer: The totality of your analysis were derivative of secondary sources which you put in evidence and forming the basis of your case before this court.
Witness: As a professional intelligence officer, I deem the evidence I have laid before this court very solid, factually supported and delivered in fair and firm manner consistent with the oath I took at the beginning of this process.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak