Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper, Kwesi Pratt, has revealed that former President John Agyekum Kufuor was his lawyer during his trial in the PNDC era.
According to the veteran journalist, he initially declined an offer from then-lawyer Kufuor to represent him, but later accepted his request, and the latter provided valuable advice and guidance.
Mr Pratt was charged alongside the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) late flagbearer, Professor Adu Boahen, in 1992 during the military-led Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government over alleged plot to destabilise the government.
In 2000, he became very critical of former President Kufuor’s administration.
Detailing their acquittance on the Footprint on Channel One TV, with Samuel Attah- Mensah, Mr Pratt said he developed a very close relationship with then lawyer Kufuor.
“Prof Adu Boahen had a team of lawyers. I had no lawyers, actually [former] President Kufuor had offered to be my lawyer, and I said no, I will defend myself. He insisted that I needed a lawyer to guide me through the law and so on. So, I came to an understanding with President Kufuor, and if you look at all the pictures of the trial, you will see that President Kufuor sat behind me.
He stressed, “He was giving me advice and all kinds of things. That was also the beginning of a very close relationship that I developed with President Kufuor. I decided to defend myself with the assistance of President Kufuor [the lawyer then].”
He recounted how he was arrested at his home in Kotobabi, and how the case was later dismissed.
The veteran journalist narrated how his 30-page caution statement to the police had saved him and Prof Boahen.
He attributed his statement, which exposed the atrocities of the military government, as having largely influenced the case being aborted completely upon his return from Togo.
He recalled how he had detailed the PNDC government’s atrocities in his caution statement, stating that it would have been a formidable task for anyone to disclose the content of his statement in an open court.
The social commentator stated that he was not just writing a statement, but rather creating what he termed a “political bomb”
“I came back, and the trial was aborted. Yes. I knew that the trial could not end from the very beginning. I had been arrested from my house in Kotobabi. Prof. Adu Boahen was teaching in Legon, when he was picked up from the classroom, and we were taken to the CID headquarters. And we were cautioned and asked to write statements.
“Within 15 minutes, Prof. Adu Boahen had finished writing his statement. It took me hours to write mine. So, Prof. Adu Boahen kept pinching me all the time, saying, ‘what are you writing? You are writing too much. You are implicating us. Please stop. But I kept writing because I knew what I was doing.
“I was writing a statement in which nobody would dare read in an open court. I think I ended up writing about 20-30 pages. It took hours to write my statement and I was asking for more papers. In that statement, I had spoken about my experiences in guard room. The number of people who had been killed in the guard room and who killed them. Who will read such a statement in an open court? I was talking about cases of corruption which had come to my notice. And the PNDC secretary allegedly involved in and so on. I was not just writing a statement; I was creating a bomb. I told Prof Adu Boahen about my statement, and he was shocked.”
Mr. Pratt, a member of the Movement for Freedom and Justice, was actively involved in political activism. The trial was held at the National Public Tribunal, a special court established by the military regime to investigate economic crimes and political atrocities
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