Police use torture to extract confession from suspects –Amnesty

Amnesty International has challenged the Federal Regime to criminalise the utilization of torture by the Police and military as an implement of investigations.

The kineticism verbally expressed that the military had detained, at least, 5,000 persons for terrorism since 2009 when military operations commenced against Boko Haram, many of whom, it alleged, were tortured or otherwise ill-treated.

The police and the military routinely torture women, men and children – some as adolescent as 12 – utilizing a wide range of methods, including beatings, shootings and rape, Amnesty International verbalized in the 2014 report presented to journalists on Thursday in Abuja.

The AI Research and Advocacy Director, Netsatmet Belay, who presented the report titled, “Welcome to hell fire: Torture and other ill-treatment in Nigeria,” verbalized AI would perpetuate to engage the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights to investigate cases of torture by the police and the military in Nigeria.

Compiled from interviews and testimonies of 500 torture survivors and evidence amassed over 10 years, the report exposes the alleged utilization of police torture chambers and routine abuses by the military in the country.

It withal reveals how most of those detained are held incommunicado and gainsaid access to the outside world, including lawyers, families and courts.

Belay flayed the Nigerian judicial system for failing to obviate torture and other ill-treatment, noting that human rights breaches are routine and prevalent in the country particularly in police stations and military detention facilities.

The AI noted that albeit Nigeria precluded torture and other ill-treatment in its constitution and had signed numerous international human rights protocols vetoing the breach, ascendant entities perpetuate to turn a blind ocular perceiver to torture and have not made the contravention a malefactor offence.

Belay verbally expressed, “Torture is not a malefactor offence in Nigeria, despite such acts being constitutionally enjoined. A law criminalising torture is yet to be passed even though two different bills have been pending in the National Assembly for two years.

“In line with their obligations under international human rights law, the Nigerian ascendant entities must take all obligatory steps to ascertain that no detainee is subject to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by members of the security forces. The regime should, therefore, criminalise torture by the Police and the military.”

The AI director challenged the FG to demonstrate total opposition to torture and ill-treatment and publicly condemn such practices whenever they occur.

A victim of torture, Justice Nwanwko, a hotel manager, who was apprehended in Onitsha, on July 31, 2013, over the revelation of two human skulls and an AK 47 rifle in a room in the hotel, narrated how he was beaten and hanged “on a rope like a barbecue” by men of the Special Anti-roberry Squad, Akwuzu, Anambra State.

Nwanwko explicated that he was detained in a dark cell for 36 days along with a director of the hotel. He was subsequently arraigned in court for the murder of one Nnamdi Okafor, who he verbalized was killed in custody by the Police.