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Nine separatists standing trial for treason in Ghana were Monday freed after the State told the court it is no longer interested in the case.
The three-member panel court struck out the case after a senior attorney Winifred Sarpong announced the decision of the state. The three member panel of the Commercial Court was presided over by Justice Jerome Nkrumah.
The nine were members of the Homeland Study Group Foundation who were arrested early May in a move to create a new West African nation to be named “Western Togoland”.
They were arrested by a joint police and military team in the eastern Volta region bordering Togo following one of their meetings to secede from Ghana.
False claims
Historians have rejected a claim by separatists that in 1956 the people of Togoland were promised another referendum after 50 years.
“It is not true,” said Professor Wilson Yayoh, from Ghana’s University of Cape Coast .
The separatists began campaigning in 1972 as the “National Liberation Movement of Togoland”, dominated by the Ewe tribal group.
Their calls to renegotiate borders sparked tensions between Ghana and Togo, and in 1976, Accra banned the group.
Facts
According to the facts, as presented by the prosecution, the group calling itself the HSGF planned to secede the Volta Region from Ghana and declare it as an independent country called Western Togoland.
They claim that the Volta region (Western Togoland) was formerly an independent state before being made to join Ghana in a plebiscite.
Eight of its members were arrested by a combined team of police and military men in a house in Ho while holding a meeting to finalise arrangements to declare the Volta Region an independent state on May 9, 20I9.
When the police intercepted their meeting, they found T-shirts with the inscriptions: “9th May is our day” and “A Citizen of Western Togoland”.
The police also found messages that revealed that Sgt Kwabla, the soldier, had given the group advance messages to hide their weapons due to a pending search by a combined team of the police and the military.
Source: Daily Mail GH
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