The government has secured the services of a specialist doctor to help identify the exhumed skeletons of six Ghanaians murdered in the Gambia. The move is to enable the government to establish which families the compensation should be paid to. Disclosing this to the Times on Thursday, Mr Kojo Wadee, Director of Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the payment of compensation formed part of the agreement reached with the Gambian government since the bodies were brought home a couple of months ago. Mr Wadee explained that as a result of the long interval before the bodies were exhumed, the identity of the skeletons needed to be established. That, he said, explained why the payment of compensation to the bereaved families had not yet commenced. Mr Wadee said the problem was compounded by the fact that though the eyewitness who brought the issue out claimed many Ghanaians were killed, investigation so far had not established any number beyond the six. "Until any other fact is made public to establish that more than the six were killed in the Gambia, we will go ahead to establish the identity of the six persons and pay the compensation to their families," he said. Mr Wadee explained that the Gambian government had accepted, in principle, to pay compensation to the six persons families as agreed on by both the United Nations and the ECOWAS fact finding mission to the Gambia to verify the case. The six were among 40 other West African nationals travelling through the Gambia, apparently to Europe in search of greener pastures, when they came up against the Gambia Security agencies. They were arrested but some were later found to have been killed and dumped in the Tanyi Forest in the Gambia. The bodies were later buried in a mass grave. Martin Kyere, a Ghanaian, who claimed to have escaped from the arrest, later broke the news to the Ghanaian authorities leading to preliminary investigations that established that they were killed by some elements within the Gambian security agency. Mr Kyere's account of the circumstances leading to the arrest and killing of the Ghanaians was initially disputed by the Gambian authorities, necessitating the empanelling of UN and ECOWAS forensic experts to conduct an independent investigation which confirmed the facts. The independent team recommended the exhumation of the bodies for befitting burials and the payment of compensation by the Gambian government. As a result, Ghana and the Gambia signed a Memorandum of Understanding to begin implementing the recommendations. Source: Ghanaian Times/Ghana