He explained kneeling is part of a strategy adopted by the force to disperse crowd as he comments about the yet-to-be-identified soldier, who was captured in viral photos on his knees.

“There is a procedure in dispersing crowds. The first is a verbal warning. The second is to cork your weapons to signal to the crowd that you are about to fire. The third is to fire warning shots but the signal to scare them includes kneeling to aim for you to be scared maybe disperse,” he told the three-committee probing the incident on Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Lt Col Peprah argued no casualties were recorded from the angle the soldier reportedly knelt and fired the shots, adding the men applied minimal force.

“As a matter of fact, the direction of the man who knelt was such that no casualty came from that side. He didn’t fire. He didn’t fire. He fired only warning shots but when he went down, he didn’t fire,” he maintained.

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The committee is made up of George Kingsley Koomson, a Justice of the Court of Appeal as Chairman, Security Analyst, Dr Vladimir Antwi Danso, and Juliet Amoah, Executive Director of Penplusbyte, a civil society organisation.

They have up to July 9, 2021, to probe, collect and collate facts on circumstances that led to the death of two persons and four injured at Ejura on June 29, 2021.

Describing the incident as unfortunate, he stated no lives were to be lost in the process.

“There was no plan to kill anyone during the Ejura disturbance. The aim was not to kill, it was just unfortunate. If the aim was to kill then hundred people would have died,” he said when he appeared before the three-member committee probing the incident.

A shooting incident on Tuesday, June 29, 2021, led to the death of two persons; Nasiru Abdul Yussif and Muntala Mohammed.

They were part of an irate youth protesting the death of a social media activist, Ibrahim Mohammed aka Kaaka Macho.

Kaaka Macho died from head injuries three days after being admitted at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, following an alleged mob attack.

However, a combined police-military team deployed to maintain peace and order reportedly fired shots into the crowd, killing two people and four injured.

Commenting on the deployment for that day Lt Col Peprah said they had a distress call from the Chairman of REGSEC, who is also the Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei- Mensah.

“My Battalion Commander called me on the day of the incident about what was happening in Ejura, the indent that we all know.

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“Then I had a call from the Chairman of REGSEC that the situation was getting out of control and there was the need for us at Operations Calm Lives to move inside, if not things will get out of control,” he narrated.

Meanwhile, the Chair of the Committee, who is also a Court of Appeal Judge, George Kingsley Koomson, recommended that the agency applies for plastic bullets to use in controlling crowd in Ghana instead of live bullets which could be fatal.