Executives of the Friends of Nana Konadu Agyeman �Rawlings (FONKAR), a spliter group in the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) had a hell of time locating the whereabouts of their Operations Director, Ernest Owusu Bempah, who was arrested and detained on Wednesday, March 14.
Owusu-Bempah has declared a hunger strike and restrained himself from either eating food or drinking water while being kept in cells in protest against his detention and inability to access his lawyers as provided by the Constitution.
He was arrested over his claims that First Lady, Ernestina Naadu Mills, benefitted $5million from the GH�51.2million paid to self-acclaimed financier of the NDC, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, as judgment debt.
Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and FONKAR members were said to have been locked up in a meeting as at press time last night, hoping to issue a press statement on the issue later.
Owusu-Bempah spent his second night in BNI cells yesterday.
For several hours, the likes of Emmanuel Saint Osei, National Coordinator of the group, Mohammed Nasiru, Nana Kakra and other FONKAR members and their lawyers shuttled between the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and that of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), located at Ridge in Accra, as officials of the two state security apparatus kept tossing them and down.
Their first port of call was the BNI headquarters, where they demanded to see their collegue but were told he was in police custody in the CID headquarters.
They then proceeded to the CID headquarters where they were also asked to go to the BNI where the officers claimed he was being kept.
Attempts by the leadership of the group to get an appointment with the BNI Director, Yaw Donkor, proved extremely difficult.
At a point, lawyers of the detained FONKAR kingpin became frustrated and left the BNI office to go and file what is known in legal terms as �habeas corpus� (produce the body).
After several back and forth movements and some phone calls from some powerful forces including the office of former President Rawlings and his wife, one Hajia Mai-Ghana, a close aide to former First Lady Nana Konadu, managed to get an appointment with the BNI Director around 5pm.
They went into a meeting which lasted for almost an hour, after which the BNI boss directed them to go to the notorious Greater Accra regional office of the Bureau at Kawukudi Junction.
At the regional BNI office, three members of the group were allowed to see Owusu-Bempah who, according to sources, was in high spirits and well-composed.
Apparently, he had been taken through a series of interrogation processes since he was taken there on Wednesday.
But the Konadu boy was said to have maintained and repeated what he wrote and said in his caution statement to the police during his interrogation on Wednesday.
After almost 30 to 45minutes, the FONKAR boys came out of the BNI office, not too happy for the continuous detention of Owusu-Bempah and the reason for which he had decided not to eat.
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