A member of the legal team of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Abraham Amaliba, has called on the Chair of the three-member committee probing the shooting of protesters in Ejura by the military to go and beg the family of the deceased to rescind their decision not to testify before the committee.
He said the family might have been disgruntled about what is going on and thus urged Justice George Kingsley Koomson to reach out to the family of Mohammed Ibrahim to consider giving their testimony at the committee.
Mr Amaliba posited that he knows the Chair of the committee as a highly affable person who can convince the family to give their testimony at the sitting.
“We are talking about some of the things that are making the family lose trust. Is it all lost? It’s not all lost. It is good it is not yet their turn. Justice Koomson as an affable person can reach out to the family of Kaaka and then assuage their fears, to let them understand that the things that they are raising will be dealt with and come back to the committee.
“I have trust in the Chair to reach out to the family members and bring them back on board but as it stands now the family members are looking and watching the conduct of the committee and they are not satisfied. That is why they came out with that statement.”
He made these suggestions in an interview with Berla Mundi on the New Day show on TV3 Friday, July 9.
Mr Amaliba, however, criticized the composition of the three-member committee, pointing out that there should have been an ex-military or police personnel who has field experience on there who can ascertain and corroborate some of the justifications the military are giving for the arbitrary shooting of unarmed protesters in Ejura.
He said, according to his affinity with the armed forces, he knows that there are two ways the military are trained to shoot, by kneeling to aim or lying prostrate to aim for the kill.
Thus, it is a blatant lie to say the soldier who knelt to aim at the protesters did not shoot his gun but rather a bullet from a pump-action gun from the protesters who killed the two persons and injured four others.
“There is nobody who has had field experience of security matters on the committee, even we lawyers, if you just have a lawyer who is a lecturer and does not go to court, he doesn’t have court experience, he doesn’t know the practice in court.
“So for instance, one of the commanders came and said that there are so many positions to shoot and what we saw of the man kneeling and aiming at the crowd did not mean that he was shooting at the crowd. Now if you had somebody with experience of shooting before, who has also gone through the mill, that person will say no, this type of kneeling is aiming but you know there is nobody at that level so all that they will do is to accept,” he charged.
Mr Amaliba cited the example of the Ayawaso West Wuogon violence committee where they had a former Inspector General of Police (IGP) who because of his experience through the mill, asked probing questions from officers who appeared before that committee.
He said the current Ejura committee lacks such a calibre of expertise on its three-member composition to probe into an incidence of shooting into unarmed protesters and crowd control in the country.
