{"id":650683,"date":"2019-07-05T11:48:38","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T11:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"<br><div>\n\t\t\n<p><strong>Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri <\/strong><br\/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Confusion has punctured the integrity of the \u2018torture story\u2019 claim\nby one of the Modern Ghana online portal staffers who is now on bail for\nalleged inappropriate cyber activities. <\/"},"modified":"2019-07-05T11:48:38","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T11:48:38","slug":"i-was-not-tortured-journalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/07\/05\/i-was-not-tortured-journalist\/","title":{"rendered":"I Was Not Tortured &#8211; Journalist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Confusion has punctured the integrity of the \u2018torture story\u2019 claim<br \/>\nby one of the Modern Ghana online portal staffers who is now on bail for<br \/>\nalleged inappropriate cyber activities. <\/p>\n<p>The media terrain woke up yesterday to a major development which put<br \/>\nthe credibility of the \u2018torture story\u2019 on the line after Emmanuel Britwum \u2013 one<br \/>\nof the duo \u2013 said he was not\u00a0 tortured<br \/>\nduring their brief incarceration in custody of the National Security.<\/p>\n<p>Emmanuel Britwum\u2019s torture denial story is in sharp contrast to that<br \/>\nof his colleague, Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri, who claimed he was turned upside<br \/>\ndown and subjected to a terrible physical ordeal, including electrical shocks by<br \/>\nstate security operatives.<\/p>\n<p>He presented a human rights-trampled story which reminded history<br \/>\nscholars about Gestapo-rating punishments in Nazi-run Auschwitz concentration<br \/>\ncamp during WWII. The National Security Council Secretariat has issued a statement<br \/>\nto deny the claim.<\/p>\n<p><strong>20 Slaps <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The litany of punishments meted out to him when he spoke gleefully<br \/>\non some radio stations included electric shocks and a slap for each question<br \/>\nposed during his interrogation \u2013 an allegation that brings the number of slaps<br \/>\nhe received to 20 or so given the fact that he fielded 20 questions or more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Contradictions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Emmanuel Ajarfor had earlier told <em>Citi FM<\/em> that following the good treatment he received at the hands<br \/>\nof security agents during his brief incarceration, he had cause to go and<br \/>\nrender gratitude to one of the officials for feeding him well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Britwum\u2019s Denial<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lamenting what he said are widespread news reports\u00a0 \u201cthat he and his editor, Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri,<br \/>\nhave become the latest helpless victims of perceived or real state-sponsored<br \/>\nviolent crackdown on media practitioners in Ghana,\u201d Emmanuel Britwum said he<br \/>\nwas neither tortured nor brutalized during his arrest and subsequent detention<br \/>\nby National Security operatives on Thursday, June 27, 2019.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Press Statement<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He said in a statement through Debora Asabere-Ameyaw, on Wednesday evening<br \/>\nthat \u201che neither witnessed Mr. Ajarfor being \u2018tortured\u2019 nor did he elect anyone<br \/>\nto speak publicly on his behalf on the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In view of the developments, Emmanuel Britwum has dissociated<br \/>\nhimself from the allegations of misconduct being levelled in his name against<br \/>\nNational Security operatives in the matter under review. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Since the case appeared under the radar of the media, the main<br \/>\nopposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) operatives have gone overdrive<br \/>\nthrough a strongly-worded correspondence in which they called for the<br \/>\nresignation of the National Security Minister, Albert Kan Dapaah. <\/p>\n<p>Now that the whole \u2018project\u2019 has been bedeviled with this contagion,<br \/>\nthe propaganda engineers might have to return to the drawing board.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cooperation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Emmanuel Britwum has assured the Ghanaian public that he is willing<br \/>\nto cooperate with security agents as they investigate the cybercrime case<br \/>\nbefore them. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Strange Withdrawal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a bizarre twist, lawyers for Emmanuel Ajarfor, the originator of<br \/>\nthe \u2018torture\u2019 story, A-Partners @ Law, released also on Wednesday saying they<br \/>\nhad withdrawn their representation for Emmanuel Britwum. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Call From GJA<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The lawyer representing his colleagues recalled being called by the<br \/>\nGJA and an NGO, OneGhanaMovement to assist the suspects as they had not had the<br \/>\nbenefit of legal representation since their arrests.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Meeting The Two<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI met them both in the company of at least seven people including<br \/>\ntheir manager, an officer of the NGO, a senior colleague, Raymond Bagnabu, who<br \/>\nbefore arriving at the Ministries Police Station, had confirmed to me via phone<br \/>\nthat he had also just been contacted by their manager to assist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Continuing, Samson Ayenini said another colleague of theirs, Nii Kpakpo<br \/>\nSamoa Addo, also said he had been called to assist.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI specifically directly asked Britwum over and over again and he<br \/>\nconfirmed he was assaulted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>According to the lawyer, the team had always been with Britwum and<br \/>\nAjarfor, assiting them to seek justice but Britwum has said he is opting out of<br \/>\ntheir services for a new lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>He wished Britwum well and reiterated that he is always available to<br \/>\nfight for the rights of journalists and the GJA in general if he is called upon<br \/>\nto do so.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Internship With<br \/>\nDaily Guide<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Both Emmanuel Ajarfor and Emmanuel Britwum were interns at <strong><em>DAILY<br \/>\nGUIDE<\/em><\/strong> at different times.<\/p>\n<p>When Emmanuel Ajarfor was at <strong><em>DAILY GUIDE<\/em><\/strong> around 2011\/2012, he introduced<br \/>\nhimself as a student from the Ghana Institute of Journalism. He was with the<br \/>\nnewspaper for about six months on internship. While at <strong><em>DAILY GUIDE,<\/em><\/strong> he said he<br \/>\nwas an orphan which won him the sympathy of many staff members.<\/p>\n<p>On the day of the landmark presidential election petition judgment<br \/>\non August 29, 2013, he joined many others to enter the residence of then<br \/>\nCandidate Akufo-Addo at Nima in Accra.<\/p>\n<p>As Nana Akufo-Addo was accepting the judgment albeit he did not<br \/>\nagree with the Supreme Court decision but for the sake of the country\u2019s<br \/>\nstability, Ajarfor sneaked into an enclosure within the compound and switched<br \/>\non a computer. Some of the aides of Nana Akufo-Addo saw him and raised the<br \/>\nalarm. He then claimed to be working with <strong><em>DAILY GUIDE<\/em><\/strong> although he had finished<br \/>\nhis internship and left the newspaper more than a year, and the men called to<br \/>\nascertain his claim. <\/p>\n<p>A.R. Gomda proceeded to the place and intervened and that saved him from being taken to the Nima Police adjacent to the then flag bearer\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 house. <\/p>\n<p><strong>By A.R. Gomda<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri Confusion has punctured the integrity of the \u2018torture story\u2019 claim by one of the Modern Ghana online portal staffers who is now on bail for alleged inappropriate cyber activities. The media terrain woke up yesterday to a major development which put the credibility of the \u2018torture story\u2019 on the line after Emmanuel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":650684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I Was Not Tortured - Journalist - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/07\/05\/i-was-not-tortured-journalist\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"I Was Not Tortured - Journalist - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri Confusion has punctured the integrity of the \u2018torture story\u2019 claim by one of the Modern Ghana online portal staffers who is now on bail for alleged inappropriate cyber activities. 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