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Four of the five soldiers arrested by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) recently have been charged alongside others for the murder of Rokko Frimpong, former Deputy Managing Director of the Ghana Commercial (GCB) Bank. The accused persons, Richard Somuah, Lamptey Hazel and Cpls Charles Ankumah and Emmanuel Antwi, were hauled before an Osu Magistrate Court yesterday after they were re-arrested barely four days after their detention.An Accra Fast Track High Court had ordered the release of the five soldiers on the ground of gross human rights violations. The others, whose identities were yet to be disclosed, were not in court.One of the soldiers, Sgt. Michael Arthur, who was arrested last Tuesday a few hours after his release, was taken to the Osu Court presided over by Emmanuel Bart Plange Brew. All of them had been charged with conspiracy and murder and their pleas were not taken.They were remanded in custody to re-appear on January 22, 2010.Presenting the facts of the case, the prosecutor, ASP Patrick Morkeh told the court that the accused persons, who were soldiers, were part of the 64 Infantry Battalion of the Ghana Armed Forces. He said sometime in June 2007, during the re-denomination of the Cedi, the then Deputy Director of GCB, Rokko Frimpong, discovered some rot in the exercise allegedly committed by some government officials and wanted to uncover the rot. He said some persons who wanted to find a way of ensuring that the secret would not be unraveled, consequently engaged the soldiers to eliminate Mr. Frimpong for a fee of between GH�5,000 to GH�15,000. The accused persons agreed and subsequently met and plotted with the said persons on how to embark on the deadly operation. According to him, during their arrest, some of the accused persons admitted to receiving some money while others denied receiving any.Counsel for the soldiers, Joe Debrah, in his submission said the stories were fabricated against his clients because whatever money any of the solders received was part of the ex-gratia awarded to the military by the former President John Agyekum Kufuor. According to him, some persons had already been arrested in connection with the murder of the late deputy MD and the case docket had been forwarded to the Attorney General�s Department for advice and necessary action; so he was at a loss as to why his clients had been arrested for the murder. An Accra Fast Track High Court Judge, in a ruling in which the soldiers filed an application for habeas corpus challenging their continuous detention by the BNI after they were detained for 16 days without trial, said it was unlawful. According to the Judge, Justice Irene Danquah, what the state did by rushing the accused persons to court for a remand just a day before the hearing of the habeas corpus, was to render the habeas corpus mute. Describing the remand of the soldiers as unlawful and an abuse of the rights of the applicants, she said their detention at an undisclosed location without any remand warrant contravened Article 14 (3) B of the Constitution, which guaranteed the rights of all individuals irrespective of race, gender and political affiliation among others. She stated that the only explanation given to the court regarding the detention of the applicants by the Acting Director of the BNI was that they did not know that the accused persons were illegally detained and the Acting Director for Public Prosecution (DPP), Gertrude Aikins, relied on that deposition as well. Mrs. Irene Danquah noted that even though the state claimed that they had sought to do the right thing by taking them to a circuit court for a remand order after their unfortunate detention, the state did not furnish the court with any proceedings of the lower court which warranted the remand. In addition, she said no error of assumption should be made where the rights of the individual was at stake, and that the court did not believe security agencies of such magnitude as the BNI and the Military, made an error of assumption in the manner the soldiers were handled.