Sister of Victim of Military Brutality Says Her Life Is In Danger

Pieces of information reaching Savannahnews have indicated that some unknown persons believed to be friends of the five (5) soldiers who brutally assaulted and tortured a 16 year old boy in Tamale, have started issuing threats on the life of the Senior Sister of the victim, for allegedly reporting the matter to the media and the police. 

The victim’s sister, Patience Bama who is now afraid to come back to Tamale confirmed in an interview with Savannahnews that, she had received several strange calls with unknown numbers from unknown or unidentified persons who had kept threatening her for involving the Police and the media in the assault case involving her 16 year old brother, Christopher Bama and five soldiers from the Tamale Airborne Force.

She told the paper that she was due to return to Tamale for her final examination in school this week (name of school withheld), but she is now afraid due to the threats on her life. 

Patience Bama who mentioned for the first time to Savannahnews how she was also manhandled and beaten by one soldier at the Military Hospital in Tamale for being much outspoken and for questioning why her brother was put in handcuff while on admission, said that the strange callers were demanding to know when she was coming back to Tamale and also wanting to know where she stays in Tamale.   

“All along I knew these soldiers were not happy with the way I was all over the place trying to help my brother. At the Kamina hospital, one of the soldiers slapped me and kicked me with his boot in my lower abdomen and still wanted to pounce on me even when I fell down. It took my mother and other patients to prevent him from beating me further. I quickly ran from there and later realized that I was bleeding seriously. When I went to hospital later, I was also admitted. But I have kept all these maltreatments because my concentration was on my brother. But looking at the way things are going, I can see my life is in danger”.

Patience Bama told Savannahnews that she had duly reported the threats to the Northern Regional Crime Officer and would lodge a formal complaint with the Police immediately on her return. 

When contacted, the Northern Regional Crime Officer, ASP John Anane confirmed that Patience Bama had reported the threats on her life to him on phone and that he had advised that she makes a formal written complaint to the police.

He said that he was with high suspicion that those threats were coming from some close friends of Corporal Sampson Atuahene and his other accomplices.

The Crime Officer, who assured the lady of all the necessary protection, encouraged her (Patience Bama) not to entertain any fear and thus described the threats as “empty ones”.

Patience Bama has become a target for possible elimination by those unknown persons following her strong stance to ensure that her 16 year old brother, Christopher Bama who was brutally assaulted and tortured by some five soldiers from the Tamale Airborne Force receive justice.

Christopher Bama was accused of stealing a TECNO mobile phone belonging to one Corporal Sampson Atuahene of the Tamale Airborne Force. 

Corporal Atuahene and his four other soldier friends including one Collins Agyei Boamah were said to have handcuffed and hanged the boy on top of a mango tree.  With his legs not touching the ground, the 16 year old boy, believed to be a long-standing errand boy for Corporal Sampson Atuahene, was beaten till he allegedly fell unconscious, and yet the soldiers would not show any mercy.

To further press on the boy to produce the missing phone he claimed he never took, the two soldiers, according to an eyewitness, melted plastic material (polythene bags) and dropped them on Christopher’s naked body until he regained consciousness.

According to Patience Bama, a Senior Sister of Christopher Bama, the boy went to the military quarters at Shishegu near Nyohini to fetch water with someone’s motorbike. Later, the soldiers called him to come back to the quarters, where they accused him of stealing the mobile phone and brutally assaulted him. 

Christopher could not pass urine, and was, therefore, given a foley catheter to aid his urination. Before his transfer to Nsawam Government Hospital, the victim according to the Chief Executive Officer of God Cares Community Hospital in Tamale, Dr. Richard Opoku had started behaving abnormally and was persistently vomiting, which, he said, was a sign of intracranial injury (head injury).

His condition, according to Doctor Opoku, was not getting better as further medical examination revealed that he had started discharging some fluid in the abdomen, and that they could not readily determine whether it was blood or peritoneal fluid.