Police quiz “coup plotters” a month before key elections

Ghanaian security officials on Monday were questioning a group of people picked up for allegedly plotting to overthrow President John Kufuor’s government, a month before the country holds key presidential and parliamentary elections.

Authorities provided no details beyond a brief police statement saying the suspects were being held for “conspiracy to subvert the democratic government and perpetuate certain terrorist actions.” No charges have yet been pressed.

The identities of the suspects were withheld, but some private Ghanaian newspapers said they included seven former soldiers who reportedly served in a unit connected to Jerry Rawlings, the ex-president whose candidate is the top challenger to Kufuor in the December 7 polls.

The December elections will be the fourth multi-party polls held in Ghana since it took the path of democracy in 1992. It is expected to be a close race although observers are predicting victory for the president’s New Patriotic Party, which has been trumpeting economic advances for the country’s 21 million people in the last four years.

Reuters news agency on Monday quoted the country’s top criminal investigator as saying the suspected civilians and retired soldiers had been found with military helmets and body armour, a firearm and ammunition.

“They were planning to commit acts of sabotage and subvert the state. They’d been holding meetings,” said David Asante-Apeatu, who heads the police criminal investigations department.

A string of coups hit Ghana immediately after its independence from Britain in 1957, but in the last couple of decades it has been praised for its stability in an otherwise troubled region.

In the last elections four years ago, Kufuor brought down the curtain on 19 years of rule by the flamboyant Rawlings, winning 57 percent of the vote against John Atta Mills.

Mills is running for the presidency again on behalf of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party that was founded by Rawlings.

Newspapers said the former soldiers, detained over the weekend, had served in the 64 Infantry Regiment, a regiment from Rawlings' time which was disbanded soon after Kufuor's ruling NPP took office in 2000.

"I am wondering why Rawlings' name is coming up in the papers. Yes, I know some men who served in the 64 Regiment were picked up but they are not Rawlings' former bodyguards or close friends as these private newspapers are alleging," Victor Smith, a special aide to the former president, told IRIN.

Smith dubbed the latest coup allegations “a diversionary attempt by a desperate government."

It is the second time this year that the government has mentioned the former 64 regiment in connection with alleged attempts to destabilise the country. Earlier in the year, the regiment's former commander, Colonel Larry Gbevlo-Lartey was arrested in connection with an unsubstantiated coup plot. He was released but later retired from the Armed Forces.

Rawlings, who seized power in a 1979 coup when he was a 32-year-old air force pilot and staged a comeback in 1981, has publicly said that he will not support any group that will use military might to usurp the country's democracy.