Five naval officers have been accused of assaulting a road user who filmed their truck after their driver was reportedly caught driving on the shoulders of the road at Tema Newtown.
The road user who was alarmed by the recklessness of the driver disclosed that, the naval officers who noticed as he filmed them, dragged him out of the taxi he was in, drove him to their base and assaulted him in a bush.
The victim whose name we have withheld, says he was empowered to film the erring men in uniform following Citi TV’s War Against Indiscipline.
“They were driving against oncoming traffic…When I started filming, the Naval officers saw me, stopped their truck and got down and started questioning what right I had to start filming them. I told them if what they were doing the right thing, they shouldn’t have a problem with me filming them.”
“They asked me to get out of the taxi, which I resisted and they dragged me into the bucket of their vehicle and asked me to lie down in their truck which I complied because all five of them carried weapons. They took me to the back of the yard at Tema Newtown. One came from behind and hit me hard and I fell on my knee and the second person also hit me hard,” he added.
He argued that there was a need for security agencies to lead the front in obeying the laws.
“I watched Citi TV’s #WAI campaign and that is why I saw the need to help support the system,” he said.
Meanwhile Chief Operations Officer for the Eastern Naval Command Tema, Commander Isaac Mahama Abu told Citi News that his men did not beat the victim.
According to him, the Naval officers wanted to only verify the motive behind the filming of the officers, and once they were convinced it wasn’t for any sinister purposes, they allowed the man to leave.
“He started filming the vehicle, the personnel were in, and they didn’t know what he was going to use that for, and they thought that whatever he was going to use it for could be a threat. They drove him to a place to find out why he was filming them but he was left to go when they found out that he didn’t have any ulterior motives. He wasn’t beaten or manhandled.”