VI. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AGAINST REAL OR SUSPECTED OPC MEMBERS: ARBITRARY ARRESTS, PROLONGED DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL, TORTURE AND EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS

Since the government of President Obasanjo came to power in May 1999, hundreds and perhaps thousands of people in Nigeria have been arbitrarily arrested, detained without charge or trial, ill-treated, tortured, or extrajudicially executed by the police. Among them were many OPC members, including some of their leaders, but also other individuals wrongly presumed to be OPC members. Some of the problems described below, for example prolonged pre-trial detention and torture in police custody, are widespread in Nigeria, for most categories of detainees. However, they appeared to be particularly pronounced in the case of the OPC, reflecting a determination on the part of the police, on instructions from the federal government, to suppress the organization. There has been a similar pattern of police repression against other self-determination groups in Nigeria: for example, members of the Igbo organization Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), active in the southeast, have also been victims of arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment, extrajudicial executions, and restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly, including during 2002.

Human Rights Watch condemns the strategy and tactics often used by the police to respond to acts of violence by the OPC. While the OPC's involvement in serious human rights abuses and criminal activities does need to be met with a strong response by government and police authorities, the widespread arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations are not only an inappropriate response but are continuing to fuel the cycle of violence. The government and the police's response towards to the OPC is in violation of Nigeria's obligations under both national and international law. The Nigerian Constitution guarantees the right to life, the right to respect for dignity of the person (including the right not to be subjected to torture), the right to personal liberty, and the right to peaceful assembly and association.¹⁰¹ The International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, which Nigeria has ratified, guarantees the right to life, the right to be free from torture, the right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention, and the right of assembly. Nigeria is also a party to the (United Nations) Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment.¹⁰²

The OPC has faced constant harassment by the police, in clear violation of the rights to freedom of assembly and association. The police have repeatedly disrupted their meetings and raided their premises without showing a judicial warrant and in situations where there was no indication that the OPC members present were engaged in criminal activity. Sometimes the police have claimed that they were holding meetings without permission or prior police clearance; at other times they did not provide any clear reason for the raids. An activist told Human Rights Watch that since they were required to obtain police permits to hold meetings in public places, the OPC had begun holding their meetings in other locations, such as houses of individual members or other private places. He described this as the OPC playing a cat and mouse game with the police. However, the OPC have generally remained defiant and have rarely if ever held their meetings in private. They have carried on with most of their activities in full knowledge of the likely consequences. In the words of a former OPC leader, "when we speak out what people want, we pull a trigger against ourselves."¹⁰³

Arrests and killings of OPC members by the police have also occurred when the police have intercepted, or attempted to intercept, OPC vehicles. When going to or from meetings or on other operations, the OPC typically move in large convoys of commercial vehicles, sometimes numbering as many as thirty or fifty vehicles and hundreds of members. On a practical level, the resulting traffic problems have led to confrontations between the OPC and the police. In more serious cases, the police have specifically set out to ambush these convoys in order to disrupt the OPC's activities and restrict their movements; several of these police operations have resulted in extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests. In some instances, however, the police have also succeeded in preventing violence by intercepting OPC convoys.

In September 2000, the police invaded Frederick Fasehun's Century Hotel in Lagos. Nobody was killed, as most of the people who were there managed to escape, but several people were injured. A woman who worked at the hotel witnessed the attack: "Many police arrived in big lorries. It was as if it was a war. They were shooting from outside. They even shot in the kitchen. They were turning over all the furniture looking for Fasehun. They said they would kill him if they found him."¹⁰⁴ There are different explanations as to what prompted the attack. Frederick Fasehun told Human Rights Watch he believed it was linked to a meeting of ethnic nationality leaders held in Lagos the previous day, at which he had refused to sign a statement that included a call for the creation of a joint military-police patrol team for Lagos.¹⁰⁵ The police gave a different version; they said that they had not been intending to go to Fasehun's hotel, but that some police officers and soldiers on a joint patrol had gone out of control when they recognized Frederick Fasehun's hotel. The policemen and soldiers claimed they saw heavily-armed people in front of Fasehun's hotel, so they opened fire and entered the hotel.¹⁰⁶

Arrests, Detention and Torture

Arrests of Rank-and-File Members

There has been a pattern of arbitrary and indiscriminate arrests of suspected OPC members by the police. Waves of arrests were especially common following the major outbreaks of violence, for example the clashes in Ketu/Mile 12 in November 1999 and Ajegunle in October 2000, and after the killing of DPO Amao in January 2000. The OPC has repeatedly claimed that its members have been targeted by the police purely on the basis of their membership of the organization, not because they were involved in any criminal offense. While there is no doubt that many OPC members have been responsible for grave human rights abuses and a range of criminal offenses, Human Rights Watch found credible evidence to support the OPC's claim that in many cases, the arrests carried out by the police were arbitrary. These arbitrary arrests were sanctioned by and sometimes carried out on the orders of senior federal government officials. For example, at around the time of the violence in Ajegunle in October 2000, Minister for Information Jerry Gana stated publicly: "Law enforcement agencies are hereby ordered to arrest and prosecute any person who claims or presents himself as a member of the OPC and similar organizations, all of which are hereby declared illegal, unacceptable, and a serious threat to the peace and security of Nigeria."¹⁰⁷ Many of those arrested were beaten at the time of their arrest and tortured in police custody. There have also been cases where the police have arrested, or attempted to arrest, relatives of OPC members where the individuals they were seeking were absent, and have set fire to the houses and belongings of OPC members.

In some cases, OPC members have been arrested not because they were suspected of any act of violence, but to prevent them from meeting. For example, thirty OPC members were reported to have been arrested in Akure, capital of Ondo State, in October 2000, on charges of unlawful assembly. The Ondo State commissioner of police was quoted in the media as saying that "they were arrested to checkmate further breakdown of law and order in the state because it is only OPC that we have been able to identify as a militant group in Ondo State [...] We don't want them to exist again or make any trouble in the state because the Federal Government has banned them. It is unlawful for them to gather as members of the OPC."¹⁰⁸

Even though many OPC members have been detained for prolonged periods, few have been successfully prosecuted. Widespread corruption within the police force has also meant that even in those cases where OPC members believed to have participated in criminal acts have been arrested, many were released after paying varying bribes to the police. Others were released on bail, or charges were dropped.

Many OPC members arrested and detained claimed that they were framed by the police and described how policemen planted weapons in front of them in order to be able to justify their arrest and eventually charge them with armed robbery. This also enabled the police to boast to the public about their "success rate" as the Nigerian media generally took the "evidence" at face value and projected the images in newspapers and on television. A former OPC member who had been arrested told Human Rights Watch: "Police parade us as armed robbers. They snap us with weapons which they plant there." Another OPC member who had been arrested said: "One time the police arrested about twenty-two people and gave them OPC black uniforms, even though most of us don't wear uniforms. The police put cartridges, bullets, whatever they recover from armed robbers, in front of you. They show it to the media. The press don't interview the accused. They just show it and present it to the public." He said that his interview with Human Rights Watch was the first time he had been asked in an objective way about his experiences in the OPC and in detention.¹⁰⁹

Human Rights Watch tried repeatedly to obtain statistics on the number of OPC members detained and the charges they were facing, but neither the police nor the OPC were able to provide comprehensive, up to date information. The Lagos state police public relations officer told Human Rights Watch that between 1999 and 2001, close to 200 suspects had been arrested for a range of offenses, including arson, murder, rape, and robbery; the real number is likely to be higher. However, he went on to say that the police did not have statistics on the number of OPC members arrested or detained, as they dealt with individuals by name and by crime, not according to whether they were OPC members.

Frederick Fasehun claimed that when he was detained in Ikoyi prison in October 2000, there were 814 OPC members detained in that prison alone, and that at the time of his release at the end of November 2000, there were a total of between 2,000 and 3,000 OPC members detained. He was not able to say how many were still detained by mid 2002. When Human Rights Watch spoke to Gani Adams in May 2002, he said that around 150 members were still detained in Ikoyi prison and about fifty in Kirikiri prison (both in Lagos). He claimed that some had been detained for about two years.¹¹⁰ A report by the O'odua Youth Movement lists 134 OPC members arrested between January 9 and February 1, 2000.¹¹¹ According to the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), by the end of January 2000, at least 2,000 suspected OPC members were being detained in police stations, 1,500 of them in Lagos.¹¹² A document circulated by the Gani Adams faction of the OPC lists 302 people arrested between November 1999 and February 2000, the majority of whom were arrested in November 1999 and January 2000.

Some of those arrested by the police were not even OPC members. In a letter addressed to the commissioner of police of Lagos State, the National Human Rights Commission details several cases of people who were arbitrarily arrested and wrongly accused of being OPC members following the violent clashes at Ketu/Mile 12 in November 1999. They include two men who were apparently labeled as OPC members despite the fact that neither of them were Yoruba; and several others who were picked up by the police just because they happened to be around the area, even though they were not arrested at the time or at the scene of the violence.¹¹³ In other cases, it has been reported that the police arrested relatives of OPC members because the members they were looking for could not be found at the time.

Real or suspected OPC members who were arrested systematically faced torture at the hands of the police. While police torture is a widespread and entrenched problem in Nigeria¹¹⁴, the torture directed at OPC members was often particularly brutal. It is possible that particularly during the period when the OPC was regularly attacking police stations and had killed or injured policemen, some policemen may have been acting partly in revenge.

A twenty-seven-year-old student and OPC member from Oyo state was arrested twice and tortured, first in Ibadan, then in Lagos. In March 2001, he decided to leave the OPC. He told Human Rights Watch: "I left the OPC because I went through hell. I was arrested again and again. My family was suffering. I wanted to move." He described his experiences at the hands of the police:¹¹⁵

I was first arrested on 6 May 2000, in Ibadan. [...] There were many attempts on me by state agents before but they didn't catch me. I was with my friend; we went to Sango, in Ibadan. The police stopped us beside the police station. They accused us of being armed robbers and put us in a cell. They placed cartridges and ammunition in front of us in the cell. Then they transferred us to SARS [Special Anti-Robbery Squad] in Ibadan. They asked me for a statement. I refused. They asked: "where did you get these [weapons] from? Where are you going to rob?" I spent twenty-two days in SARS; so did my friend. No one knew I was there. I had to drink my own urine so as not to drink their water. In SARS I was hanged [as described below] and beaten. They threatened to kill us. They said we were OPC and fomenting trouble in the country. [...]

Eventually my family stepped in. We went to court. They charged us with robbery, unlawful possession of firearms, disturbing the peace. We were denied bail. We were taken to Agodi prison in Ibadan. There the police kept asking me: "where did you get those arms from? What about these arms?" I said they were not mine. We spent three months there, then we were released on bail in early September. [...]

I was arrested again in Lagos in December 2000, with another friend, during an OPC meeting in Ikorodu. Ten of us were arrested. I was detained at SARS in Ikeja. I spent Christmas and New Year in there. You can see the marks on my arms where they hanged me with ropes. They tied my arms and legs behind my back. I was hanging for four hours until blood was pouring out of my ears and mouth. They dehumanize people. They said they had information that we were planning to disturb people in Ikorodu. I explained we were just holding a meeting. I was released on 10 January 2001. My friend was transferred to Kirikiri prison. He spent about seven months there. He was badly tortured. He can't move his arm.

Human Rights Watch researchers spoke to other OPC members who had been detained and tortured at SARS, including three men in their twenties who were among a group of forty-nine OPC members arrested by the police in Lagos on November 26, 2001; many of them were beaten at the time of their arrest. The police then took them to SARS, beat them again there and took all their money. Twenty-four of them were then released, and the others transferred to Ikoyi prison, where they remained until their release on April 22, 2002. The three interviewed by Human Rights Watch one month after their release said they had been badly beaten and hit with knives, nails, gun-butts, and iron bars. One of them still had serious injuries on his back from beatings with gun-butts.¹¹⁶

On January 14, 2000, nineteen men, at least five of whom admitted being OPC members, were arrested by the police in Mowo, in the Badagry area of Lagos, and charged with murder and conspiracy to murder. One of them, who was an OPC member, described in a memorandum how he was first beaten by mobile policemen who arrested him at his home: "I was attacked and beaten to a point of unconsciousness/coma, stripped naked and dragged to the main road where I was made to lie down with my face on the ground while Mobile policemen stood around me at gun point. While naked they look over my body and said `Bastard Yorubawa -See marks on him [a reference to the traditional marks which many Yoruba have on their bodies]-he is OPC hopeless people.'" His statement then describes how he was tortured at Panti police station the following day, when he refused to sign a statement which he had not been allowed to read. "The policeman brought out a lengthy statement of about four pages front and back, this paper he gave me to sign the bottom end of the last paper. I told him to give me the statement to read it over before appending my signature on it, he nearly took life out of me for making such request. I was beaten with iron rod, stick and handle of his pistol [...] All my pleading earned me more beatings, I later suggested that if he could not give me to read, he should, in the name of Almighty Allah read the statement to my hearing, yet he threatened to shoot me."¹¹⁷ He suffered serious injuries as a result of the torture. He was then detained in Ikoyi prison until August 11, 2000, when he was released.

Arrests of OPC Leaders

Frederick Fasehun has been arrested and detained several times, both before and since the Obasanjo government came to power in 1999. On December 18, 1996, he was arrested, charged with treason in connection with violent attacks, and detained for a year and a half; he was released on June 26, 1998, three weeks after President Sani Abacha died. Under the current government, he and forty-one alleged OPC members were arrested in October 2000 following the violence between the OPC and Hausa in Ajegunle; they were charged with various offenses including murder, conspiracy to murder, and unlawful possession of weapons. Fasehun was detained for a month in Ikoyi prison in Lagos. On the day he was due to be released on bail, he was re-arrested and transferred to Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State, where he was detained for a further four days, then released. The charges against him were dropped. Six other, lower-level OPC members also detained in Ilorin remained in detention for another three months.¹¹⁸

After the killing of DPO Amao in January 2000, Gani Adams was declared wanted by the police, who offered a financial reward of 100,000 naira (approximately U.S.$770) for his capture; he went underground for several months. Eventually, he was arrested in Lagos on August 22, 2001, a week after another clash between the OPC and the police in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Gani Adams and the OPC claimed that he gave himself up voluntarily; however, numerous other testimonies contradict this somewhat unlikely claim. His arrest was highly publicized and was the subject of much comment by the media and the general public.

Gani Adams told Human Rights Watch that he was tortured soon after his arrest, in the statement room at the police station, and that he was kicked and beaten with batons. He said there were about twelve policemen present. They asked him for information about riots which had occurred on specific dates, but he refused to confess to anything. He claimed the police later tried to force him to sign a statement and hit him on the mouth with a pistol. He didn't sign their statement but wrote his own statement instead.¹¹⁹

After three days in police custody, he was taken to the magistrate's court then transferred to Kirikiri prison in Lagos. After several court hearings, and about forty days in detention, he was granted bail. However, he was immediately re-arrested just as the bail order was about to be signed. He was questioned for several hours again at the Ogun State police command; the police did not mistreat him. After four days, he was transferred to Ibara prison, in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Two weeks later, in late October, he was granted bail again and released. He had been charged with about twenty offenses, including murder, armed robbery, illegal possession of arms, and the attack on Abeokuta police station.¹²⁰ According to the police, he was released because there was insufficient evidence to connect him personally with any specific offense, and the charges were dropped.

Extrajudicial Executions

The police have shot dead scores of real or suspected OPC members, in the course of their operations to crack down on the organization. Some were killed when police stormed OPC meetings, others in the context of shoot-outs between the OPC and the police. In many cases, it appeared that the police shot at them indiscriminately and made little or no attempt to arrest them without resorting to lethal force. Many of those killed may not even have been armed at the time. According to Frederick Fasehun, "killing an OPC member became a mark of honor for the police."¹²¹ By August 2001, the OPC had drawn up a list of eighty of its members who had been killed by the police since the government ban on the organization in 1999. The real figure is likely to be higher.

One of the most serious recent cases was the extrajudicial execution of between thirty and forty-five OPC members by the police in Owo, Ondo State, in January 2002 (see details in section IV above). On the basis of past experience of events in Owo, described above, and the particular political environment there, it is possible to conclude that the OPC members who were intercepted by the police might well have been planning an attack or other acts of violence on that day; however, in such a case, the police should have made every attempt to arrest or question them, rather than engage in a violent battle which resulted in the death of such a large number of people.

An okada driver described how the police killed several OPC members at a location known as Afromedia, in Alaba, Lagos in 2001: "The mobile police were after the OPC. They came with trucks. By chance the OPC happened to come along in a convoy of four vehicles. The mobile police just opened fire on them and killed at least five, then carried their bodies away. Some OPC ran into the swamp. The police were firing after them too. They killed at least six there. The bodies stayed there rotting. The police set the OPC vehicles on fire and burned them. I saw it happen. On that day, the OPC didn't fire at the police. They were taken by surprise."¹²²

The OPC itself has reported a large number of other cases where its members were killed by the police, for example:

_ A press release issued by the Gani Adams faction of the OPC on July 23, 2000 describes an "unprovoked" attack by the police on a large OPC rally on July 16, 2000, in Lagos. OPC members from different areas of Lagos were to converge on the OPC headquarters in Mushin. The news release states that "heavily armed and fierce-looking policemen arrived in a convoy of about twelve lorries and immediately began firing live bullets on us." Two OPC members died and several others were injured. As the OPC members then headed towards Bariga, they were reportedly ambushed there by the police; others were attacked by the police at Idimu, where six OPC members were killed.¹²³

_ On October 10, 2000, several OPC members were shot dead by the police and others arrested during a march in Lagos organized by the Fasehun faction of the OPC to protest against violence against Nigerians in Libya. According a statement released by the OPC on October 11, 2000, the protesters were making their way towards the Libyan embassy in Lagos when police near the U.S. embassy opened fire on them, killing four on the spot. The police also raided the home of Kayode Ogundamisi, the OPC National Secretary, in Alimosho, Agege, apparently in an effort to arrest him; they did not succeed in apprehending him but arrested more than thirty other OPC members. They also shot dead Moojed Aromashodun, the OPC coordinator of Alimosho local government area, who was also the deputy head of the Eso group in Alimosho and Agege.

_ The OPC has alleged that in two other incidents, on February 20 and 27, 2001, the police stormed their meetings at Agbodo, Egbe, in Lagos, killing six OPC members and injuring and arresting others.

_ On August 14, 2001, two OPC members-Lanre George and one other-were reportedly shot dead when the police stormed an OPC meeting in the Mokola area of Abeokuta. Several others were wounded and more than ten were arrested. ¹²⁴

_ On September 14, 2001, at least two people were killed when the police opened fire on a large OPC convoy of vehicles carrying several thousand members to the court to protest at Gani Adams's arrest and detention. Two died on the spot at Ikeja roundabout; several others were seriously injured.¹²⁵

In the same way that the police have sometimes arrested relatives of OPC members in their place, there have also been reports that relatives of OPC members have been killed by the police. For example, according to the CDHR, Ganiyu Lamidi and Sikiru Oseni were killed on January 11, 2000, in Somolu, Lagos, apparently because the police could not find their mother, whom they suspected of being an OPC member.

101 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, Chapter IV, sections 33, 34, 35 and 40.

102 Article 2 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or degrading Teatment or Punishment states: "Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever [...] may be invoked as justification of torture."

103 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 2, 2002.

104 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, May 22, 2002.

105 Human Rights Watch interview with Frederick Fasehun, Lagos, May 22, 2002.

106 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 3, 2002.

107 See "Clampdown on Nigerian militants," BBC News Online, October 19, 2000.

108 Report quoted in Nigeria Today Online (electronic news service), October 24, 2000.

109 Human Rights Watch interviews, Lagos, September 14, 2002.

110 Human Rights Watch interview with Gani Adams, May 23, 2002.

111 "Obasanjo's war on OPC," a special report by the OYM, March 1, 2000. The report does not specify all the charges faced by those arrested, and Human Rights Watch has not been able to confirm whether, as alleged, many of these were trumped-up charges or whether there was substantial evidence against those arrested.

112 See memorandum submitted by the CDHR to the Senate ad-hoc committee on the OPC and statement delivered to a press conference by Femi Falana, president of the CDHR. The CDHR is a non-governmental organization which has been active on behalf of OPC members believed to have been victims of human rights violations.

113 Letter entitled "Mile 12 riot: arrest and detention of suspects," sent by the National Human Rights Commission to Mike Okiro, then commissioner of police for Lagos State, February 4, 2000. The National Human Rights Commission was set up by the federal government in 1996 to monitor human rights developments and advise the government on human rights policies.

114 See, for example, Amnesty International report "Nigeria - Security forces: serving to protect and respect human rights?" December 2002.

115 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, September 14, 2002.

116 Human Rights Watch interviews, Lagos, May 22, 2002.

117 See Memorandum submitted on behalf of Alhaji Alani Olabode Ajose by the CDHR to the Tribunal of inquiry into civil disturbances in Lagos State, January 26, 2001.

118 Human Rights Watch interviews with Frederick Fasehun and other OPC members, Lagos, May 22, 2000.

119 Human Rights Watch interview with Gani Adams, Lagos, May 23, 2002.

120 Ibid.

121 Human Rights Watch interview, Lagos, May 22, 2002.

122 Human Rights Watch interview, Alaba, Lagos, September 1, 2002.

123 OPC press release, July 23, 2000. Human Rights Watch has not been able to confirm whether OPC members also used violence during these incidents.

124 Likewise, Human Rights Watch has not been able to confirm whether OPC members also used violence during this incident.

125 Ibid.