Soldiers brutalize boy over alleged phone theft

Christopher Bamah peered at things in the studio like he was in an extraterrestrial place. He looked like he sees everything but yet he sees nothing.

His body language does not recognize the presence of anybody except his brother. Traumatised into silence, the teenager was near dumb.

Joy FM’s Super Morning Show presenter, Kojo Yankson, quickly saw the imperative need to rely on his brother, Richard, as the best chance to get the story out.

Two soldiers with an insane suspicion of theft have brutalized the 16-year into submission then silence and now sheepishness.

“It has affected him not only physically, but psychologically…hmm”, the Super Morning Show presenter sighed.

Two soldiers, frustrated that they could not find a Techno phone at Kamina Barracks in Tamale on April 4, seized Christopher’s motorbike and warned him to return a phone they claim was left on a table.

He had just returned from fetching water.

“Look at me? I can’t buy a motorbike. It is for somebody. If you are insisting I took your phone, then you take my phone…the soldiers got annoyed,” Christopher told them.
His oral defence pleading innocence was taken as an insult to the soldier’s military intelligence, his brother explained.

Christopher was handcuffed to a mango tree where the soldiers rolled out a torture therapy that began with beating him in rapid turns.

“When they were tired they sat down and smoke wee”, Richard, his brother said.
They melted plastic bags until droplets of black molten heat dripped over his body, even on his private parts.

The ordeal drew the whole community to the scene. From 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. no chorus of mercy, no fervent begging, no practiced pleading penetrated the conscience of his torturers.

Christopher was dragged to a hospital at Kamina barracks where he was then handcuffed to a bed. He cried for water at the hospital and vomited blood at home.
“He couldn’t even sit down”, his brother said, cautious not to give free rein to a dam of emotion building up in his voice.

It was recommended that because his condition defied medical care in Tamale, the 16-year old boy be flown to the 37 Military hospital in Accra because he couldn’t sit in a bus.
“I was not having money, [so] I brought him by public transport,” his Richard said. The tortured boy made a 10-hour torturous journey to Accra.

His brother points to predictable feet dragging by the police and the military in Tamale since the April 4 incident has left him footing the bill at the hospital in Tamale, the transport to Accra and medical test in Accra.

“I have nothing with me. I have sold everything in my room but still he is on his sick bed. We are not on insurance. Everything is buy and buy..lab test, drugs everything, even what you eat sef is buy and buy”.

What has been the reaction of the three soldiers? His torturers in a grudging show of remorse put together a GHC500 contribution for his treatment.

Corporal Samson Attuahene, Collins Agyei Boamah and a third person of 6th Battalion of Infantry are in military detention, the police claim.

After several scans, the doctors say Christopher’s mind is not normal, his kidney is damaged and some internal organs may also have been hurt in the 5-hour merciless beating. Chris cannot urinate.

Christopher Bamah is not a stranger to the soldiers who tortured him. He had been an errand boy for the military men at the barracks.

He pounds fufu for them, but they have pounded his humanity out of him.

Source: Myjoyonline.com