It was Tuesday, everyone remembered, ten o’clock, the sad news made headline in the air.
“…The military court finds you Brigadier Zaro and your men guilty as charged. You have in many slightest opportunity sought to endanger the security of this nation by furthering the aim of a revolutionary group which had for sometime gone in hiding and plotting coup – overthrowing the government of this nation…it is in the power, interests and supremacy of the law to decide your fate and I stand by the law to………. As to your counsel who lacks the willpower to pronounce the weight of law I still stand to tell him to visit his conscience and professional ethics to keep you his clients in line. I therefore quote him “It is my view that the breaches of fundamental rights are so serious as to arouse grave concern that any trial before this tribunal will be fundamentally flawed and unfair. This could be right, only if he is right”
That was all. The military tribunal did not give the innocent full able-bodied men time to prove their innocence in what they were accused of. That was African way of interpreting law. Of course it had been influenced by a higher hand. Time had been wasted in order to delay their justice and even now that it arrived, it was of no use.
After this ruling, a shout of uproar broke out. Time was waiting for this moment. Old wound got torched. War had been declared in most hearts, feud that the many generations will read in the history book and continue. Old words, once put to other use flew through the air.
Zaro and his comrades denied the charges, but were imprisoned for over a year before being found guilty and sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal, hand-selected by the general.
For Brigadier Zaro, he could be trusted, though the decency of anyone in military office was in question during those military years. Good men never change from what they were. The issue of trust does not come up always especially when coup was involved. It was considered a betrayal at all and should be treated as such. In the outside profession, everyone knew that he could be trusted. He was too decent and civil to plot for the fall of his close friend from their university days in Egypt. A tall and physically imposing man – he looked like a soldier and he was one, yet was easy going and spoke in a slow, measured tone. He was a man of principle who knew all the rules in the code of human relations and was loyal to a fault. He disciplined himself to fight only when it was an option and to be loyal to a trusted administration, a decision that showed good military judgment. He was a loyal and forceful friend and repository of military rules; so discreet and kind, reserve and civil and could keep secret as long as they are made to be. He could defend the profession and had in his fingertips the ethics, the punishment and the all. Despite all these, it was sad to note that his effort came crash in a day. Thus the Majors probably figured that Zaro had to be silenced in order to prevent him from raising the alarm of mistreatment for his dear regional men and thereby preaching them to embrace parliamentary system of government or regional independent.
His sadness multiplied when he heard of the death of Jabi, his fellow infantry soldier and childhood friend, who was hurriedly killed with his colleagues after their arrest and their body dumped in a mass grave on the night of the announcement of his sentence. Acid was poured on the bodies, and they burnt to be eternally remembered. Military! Inhuman treatment! Abuse of human right! These three words were always carried to heart in any country presided by military.
Amidst cries and anguish these men were hanged, Zaro was the last person to be hanged and so was forced to watch the excruciating pain of the death of his colleagues. These six men were executed in defiance of international appeals for leniency. Calls, letters and telegrams came in succession to save the soul of these compatriots, but it was all ignored. Like flowers that rose with the sun, they died in that hot afternoon in the heart of this African soil. Their families cried out loudly to God in anguish of heart. It was all carried out as planned. But the pattern of killings in the military gave it a partisan appearance: killed where mostly men of note who had come from the southeastern part of Kandala. No honor as supposed, no cenotaph, no recognition. They were treated like common criminals.