Wa: Soldiers Brutalize Residents Over Alleged Missing Phone [Video]

A viral video on social media on Thursday, July 1, 2021, showed armed military officers brutalizing some residents of Wa, the Upper West Regional capital, allegedly over a missing mobile phone.

This comes barely a week after soldiers opened fire on protesters at Ejura in the Ashanti Region, leading to the death of two people and injuries to four others.

The move is said to have been triggered by the theft of a mobile phone supposedly belonging to one of the military officers.

The victims who are mostly commercial tricycle operators, motorists and pedestrians were whipped and made to roll on the bare floor with some forced into gutters nearby.

Several of them are said to have sustained various degrees of injury.

Two of them are currently on admission at the Wa Municipal Hospital.

One of the victims, a 29-year-old vulcanizer, Gafur Mahama is suspected to have developed a fracture in his right thigh during the assault.

Public Relations Officer of the Upper West Regional Coordinating Council, Cletus Awuni was also a victim.

According to him, the soldiers dragged him out of a car and interrogated him for filming the incident.

“They asked me if I was the one filming them. Before I could realise it, they hit me three times on my head with an object. Another one hit me from behind,” he narrated.

He also revealed that the Upper West Regional Director of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Mustapha Ahmed was also not spared.

 

 

 

Soldiers brutalize boy over missing phone in 2016

It would be recalled that a similar incident occurred in 2016 in the Northern Region, where a 16-year-old errand boy of some soldiers at the military quarters at Shishegu was beaten to a pulp by two officers.

The officers claimed that the boy had stolen their mobile phone.

The teenager was assaulted by two soldiers, who pointed guns at his head in a bid to get him to confess to stealing the Techno mobile phone.

According to a senior sister of the victim, Patience Bama, the boy went to the military quarters at Shishegu to fetch water with someone’s motorbike when the incident happened. She revealed that the boy, after fetching water, was asked by the soldiers to return after accusing him of stealing the mobile phone.

The soldiers subsequently seized the motorbike and asked him to produce the phone, but when he was unable to do so, he was assaulted.

She said the two soldiers, after beating her brother with sticks, also threatened to shoot him if he did not produce the phone.

 

 

 

Source: myjoyonline