Ghana: Information on any "Kangaroo courts" that operated at the Gondar Barracks outside Accra and tried suspected government opponents from 1989 and whether these courts are in existence

Information on "Kangaroo courts" which operated at the Gondar Barracks outside Accra, and which tried suspected government opponents from 1989 is currently unavailable to the DIRB in Ottawa.

However, according to the deputy coordinator of the North American branch of the Statesman, a pro-New Patriotic Party (NPP) paper on Ghanaian politics, a system of public tribunals which the source referred to as "Kangaroo courts" was set up by the Rawlings regime during its second coming into power in 1989 (17 Nov. 1994). The tribunals began as "peoples courts," but they were turned into public tribunals in an effort to give the tribunals some respectability following criticism by the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) and other national and international human rights organizations (ibid.).

According to the source, military and police personnel broke into people's homes, stole their property and took away their cars; to oppose them was to invite allegations of being "an enemy of the revolution," which could result in being arraigned before a public tribunal (ibid.). These operations did not respect the procedures of the "normal" Ghanaian legal tradition, which is founded on the British legal system (ibid.). According to the source, the courts established to handle cases involving the "enemies of the revolution" were political courts, whose decisions were based on the whims of government officials. Their introduction, brought a period of "lawlessness" into Ghana in which allegations by military and police personnel or civilian accomplices of the government were enough to find persons guilty (ibid.).

The publisher of the Ghana Drum in Washington, DC corroborated the above information provided by the deputy coordinator of the North American branch of the NPP (18 Nov. 1994). According to him, the vigilantism that prevailed in Ghana between 1989 and immediately after the 1992 presidential elections must be attributed to these "courts," which existed outside the basic Ghanaian legal system. Those arrested by the soldiers or police for "economic crimes" or "general crimes against the revolution" could be held in military barracks, police stations or in offices of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) (ibid.). The arresting officers meted out instant justice at this mock trials and they were the prosecutors, judges and jurors (ibid.).

A journalist with the London-based New African stated that as to whether the extra-judicial trials that permeated Ghanaian politics until the 1992 return to civilian rule can be termed "Kangaroo courts" depends on one's political perspective (18 Nov. 1994). The New African journalist noted that because the public tribunals operated outside the parameters of the "normal" Ghanaian legal system, many Ghanaians preferred to call them "Kangaroo courts". Some of the people who sat on the cases had little legal knowledge, and they definitely lacked the knowledge that would qualify them to sit on the benches of the "normal" courts (ibid.).

According to the journalist, the decisions of the tribunals were predetermined by the government officials who arraigned those charged. Private homes and assembly halls were commandeered for public tribunals (ibid.). The source was unaware that the tribunals sat in military barracks, but he noted that military trials of military personnel took place in military barracks. According to the source, some military personnel, primarily non-commissioned officers (NCOs), had rooms set aside in the barracks where they summarily dispensed with complaints from civilian relatives and friends "who had bones to pick with others". Such instant justice was not systematically organized nor sanctioned by the government (ibid.).

For basic information on the public tribunals system, which operated outside the Ghanaian legal system until 1992, please refer to Responses to Information Requests GHA17425.E of 19 May 1994, GHA15661.E of 3 November 1993, GHA15125 of 14 September 1993, GHA14831 of 23 July 1993 and GHA13492 of 15 March 1993. These documents are currently available at your Regional Documentation Centre. Also, for information on the general human rights situation in Ghana since 1989, please refer to Responses to Information Requests GHA18691.E of 20 October 1994, GHA18279.E of 14 September 1994, GHA18199.E of 12 September 1994, GHA17398.E of 7 June 1994, GHA17376.E of 18 May 1994, GHA17375.E of 18 May 1994 and GHA16055.E of 17 January 1994. These documents are also currently available at your Regional Documentation Centre.

This response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the DIRB within time constraints. This response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.

References

Executive editor and publisher, Ghana Drum, Washington, DC. 18 November 1994. Telephone interview.

Journalist with New African, London. 18 November 1994. Telephone interview.

Publisher, Statesman (north American edition) and deputy coordinator of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) (north America), New York City. 17 November 1994. Telephone interview.

Other Sources Consulted

Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents. Yearly.

Amnesty International Country file (Ghana).

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Yearly.

DIRB Country file (Ghana).

Human Rights Watch World Report. Yearly.

Material from the Indexed Media Review (IMR).