Nigeria's torture profile, hitherto regarded as an open-secret, known only by security agents, victims of torture and their relatives, has burst open on the global stage following the release of a comprehensive by Amnesty International, entitled "Welcome to Hell."
The report graphically exposes the fact that Nigeria’s police and
military routinely torture women, men, and children – some as young as 12 –
using a wide range of methods including beatings, shootings and rape.
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| teenage boy arrested for being a suspected militant had melted plastic poured on his back in 2013 |
“Welcome to hell
fire”: Torture and other ill-treatment in Nigeria details how people are often
detained in large dragnet operations and tortured as punishment, to extort
money or to extract “confessions” as a shortcut to “solve” cases.
“This goes far beyond
the appalling torture and killing of suspected Boko Haram members. Across the
country, the scope and severity of torture inflicted on Nigeria’s women, men
and children by the authorities supposed to protect them is shocking to even
the most hardened human rights observer,” said Netsanet Belay, Amnesty
International’s Research and Advocacy Director.
“Torture is not even a criminal offence in Nigeria. The country’s parliament must immediately take this long overdue step and pass a law criminalizing torture. There is no excuse for further delay.”
Compiled from hundreds
of testimonies and evidence gathered over 10 years, the report exposes the
institutionalized use of police torture chambers and routine abuses by the
military in a country that prohibits torture in its constitution but has yet to
pass legislation outlawing the violation.
The report also
reveals how most of those detained are held incommunicado – denied access to
the outside world, including lawyers, families and courts.
Torture has become
such an integral part of policing in Nigeria that many police stations have an
informal “Officer in Charge of Torture” or O/C Torture. They use an alarming
array of techniques, including nail or tooth extractions, choking, electric
shocks and sexual violence.
In one illustrative
incident Abosede, aged 24, told Amnesty International how sickening police
abuse left her with a permanent injury:
“A policewoman took
me to a small room, told me to remove everything I was wearing. She spread my
legs wide and fired tear gas into my vagina… I was asked to confess that I was
an armed robber… I was bleeding… up till now I still feel pain in my womb.”
Nigeria’s military is
committing similar human rights violations, detaining thousands as they search
for Boko Haram members.
Mahmood, a 15 year
old boy from Yobe state, was arrested by soldiers with around 50 other people,
mainly boys between 13 and 19 years old. He told Amnesty International that the
military held him for three weeks, beat him repeatedly with their gun butts,
batons and machetes, poured melting plastic on his back, made him walk and roll
over broken bottles and forced him to watch other detainees being
extra-judicially executed. He was eventually released in April 2013.
Military in Yobe
state even arrested and beat a 12 year old boy, poured alcohol on him, forced
him to clean vomit with his bare hands and trod on him.
“Soldiers pick up
hundreds of people as they search for those associated with Boko Haram, then
torture suspects during a ‘screening’ process that resembles a medieval witch
hunt,” said Netsanet Belay.
“Torture happens on
this scale partly because no one, including in the chain of command, is being
held accountable. Nigeria needs a radical change of approach, to suspend all
officers against whom there are credible allegations of torture, to thoroughly
investigate those allegations and to ensure that suspected torturers are
brought to justice.”
In most of the
torture allegations against Nigerian state security forces documented by
Amnesty International, no proper investigations were carried out and no
measures were taken to bring suspected perpetrators to justice.
When internal
investigations within the police or the military do take place, the findings
are not made public and the recommendations rarely implemented. Of the hundreds
of cases researched by Amnesty International, not one victim of torture or
other ill-treatment was compensated or received other reparation from the
Nigerian government.
The Nigerian
government is aware of the problem and has set up at least five Presidential
Committees and working groups over the last decade on reforming the criminal
justice system and eradicating torture. However, the implementation of these
recommendations has been painfully slow.
“Our message to the
Nigerian authorities today is clear – criminalize torture, end incommunicado
detention and fully investigate allegations of abuse,” Netsanet Belay said.
“That would mark an
important first step towards ending this abhorrent practice. It’s high time the
Nigerian authorities show they can be taken seriously on this issue.”
FACTS AND FIGURES
Nigeria: Two-faced
on torture
Although Nigeria
prohibits torture and other ill-treatment in its constitution and has signed
numerous international human rights protocols banning the violation,
authorities continue to turn a blind-eye to torture and have not even made the
violation a criminal offence. The following facts and figures give an idea of
the scale of the problem and the government’s prolonged failure to act.
Torture by numbers
5,000 –
the minimum estimated number of people detained since 2009 since military
operations began against the armed group Boko Haram, many of whom have been
tortured or otherwise ill-treated
500 –
the number of interviews with torture survivors, detainees, their relatives,
rights defenders and lawyers Amnesty International conducted during its
research
20 –
the number of research visits to Nigeria made by Amnesty International that
contributed to this report
12 –
the number of commonplace torture methods documented in Amnesty International’s
report
7 –
the number of years since the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture found that
torture had become an “intrinsic part of the functioning of the police in
Nigeria” and recommended torture to be criminalised.
7 –
the number of international protocols banning torture that Nigeria is party to
and is failing to implement
2 –
the number of years that legislation criminalizing torture has been pending in
the Nigerian parliament
1 –
Informal Officer in Charge of Torture, known as O/C Torture, in many Nigerian
police stations
Nigeria’s top
torture techniques
The Nigerian police
and military commonly use a disturbing range of methods to torture people in
custody:
Beatings,
including with whips, gun butts, machetes, batons, sticks, rods and cables
Rape
and sexual assault, including inserting bottles and other objects into a
woman’s vagina.
Shooting
people in the leg, foot or hand during interrogation
Extracting
nails, teeth, fingernails and toenails with pliers
Suspending
detainees upside down by their feet for hours
Tying
detainees to a rod by their knees and elbows and suspending them
as on a
roasting spit.
Starvation
Forcing
people to sit, lie or roll on sharp objects, such as glass or a board
with nails
Electric
shocks, including administering shocks to the genitals
Choking
with ropes until victims faint
‘Tabay’
– when officers tie detainees elbows are behind their backs and
suspend
them
Water
torture’ – when hot and cold water are poured on naked bodies
Failing in its
obligations
By allowing routine
torture to go unchecked, Nigeria’s government is breaching its agreements
under:
1. The International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
2. United Nation
Convention against Torture and the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against
Torture
3. International
Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
4. The African
Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights
5. Convention on the
Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women
6. Convention on the
Rights of the Child
7. The Geneva
Conventions – common Article 3, and the Second Additional Protocol
Testimony from the
Torture Chambers of Nigeria
Chinwe
Police arrested
Chinwe at the hotel where he works on 31 July 2013. Two guns and a human skull
had been found in the hotel. He told Amnesty International that officers
stripped him and the 12 other hotel staff (six women and six men), beat them,
placed them in an unventilated police van and left it in direct sunlight for
five hours.
On 1 August they were
moved to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad’s centre in Awkuzu, Anambra state. He
told Amnesty International:
“I was thrown inside
a cell. I noticed a written sign on the wall “Welcome to hell fire”... I was
taken to the interrogation room. There was a police officer at one end with two
suspects who were chained together. That was the ‘theatre’ – the interrogation
room. I saw ropes streaming down from the ceiling tops, bags of sand elevated
on the perimeter wall fence of the hall and all types of rod and metal in
different shapes and sizes. I heard shouts and screams from torture victims… I
saw buckets of water on standby in case anybody faints or opts to die before
appending [their] signature to already written statements.”
Chinwe described how
four officers questioned him about his family and academic background, tied him
by his hands and legs, passed a rod between them and elevated him from a
perimeter wall. They poured water on him whenever he passed out from the pain.
Chinwe was charged
with murder and remanded in custody. He has since been freed on bail and is
currently awaiting trial.
Musa
Musa is a market
vendor at his village in Yobe state. On 7 October 2012, soldiers from
Nigeria’s infamous Joint Task Force arrived at the village looking for people
associated with Boko Haram and arrested Musa along with over 180 other people.
Musa told Amnesty
International that he and the other detainees were taken to a detention centre
in Potiskum known as the ‘rest house’. He said that soldiers forced him and six
other men into a deep hole in the ground, in which four other men were already
standing.
The bottom of the
hole was littered with broken glass and Musa and the others had to stand
barefoot on the glass.
Musa said he spent
three days in the hole. He discovered one of the other men had already been
there for three days. The man’s hands were tied behind his back and his skin
was peeling off because the cable his hands were tied with had been doused in
acid. His body was covered in blood. According to Musa, the soldiers would also
periodically pour cold water or hot melted plastic on them while they were in
the hole.
Afterwards Musa was
transferred to Damaturu camp, known as ‘Guantanamo’, where he was left for
three days without food or drink. Musa says soldiers walked on detainees in
their boots, beat them in the morning, and kept them in unventilated cells all
day. He estimated that one or two people died in the camp every day as a result
of the treatment.
Musa was eventually
released from the camp without charge, but had to flee his home for fear that
he would be picked up and tortured again.
A former soldier who
served at Damaturu confirmed to Amnesty International how torture was routinely
used at the camp.
“…An electrified
baton is used on a person to make them talk. People have also been tied up
[outdoors] for long periods, their limbs tied to the wire around the basketball
court. They tie people with their hands stretched behind their arms (Tabay)…
people kept like that for six or seven hours lose their hands, people kept like
that much longer can even die. The interrogators also shot many people in the
knees, or use sticks to beat them...”
Abosede
Abosede was 24 years
old when police arrested her in Lagos on 18 November 2013. She told Amnesty
International she was held for five months on suspicion of theft and repeatedly
sexually assaulted while in custody. She also said that policemen constantly
verbally abused her, calling her and the other women in detention ‘prostitutes’
and ‘robbers’.
She said that on a
number of occasions during her detention a policewoman would take her to a
small room and tell her to undress and lie down. The officer told her to
‘confess’ to the theft while firing tear gas spray into her vagina. She
resisted for several traumatic episodes, but eventually gave in for fear of the
pain. Despite bleeding as a result of the torture, she was never taken to
hospital.
Abosede was charged
with theft and remanded in custody at Kirikiri women’s prison in Lagos. She is
still in prison awaiting trial now, ten months after her arrest.
Moses Akatugba
Moses was 16 years
old and awaiting the results of his secondary school exams when his life
changed forever. On 27 November 2005, the Nigerian army him and charged him
with stealing three phones.
Moses describes being
shot in the hand and soldiers beating him on the head and back during his
arrest. He was initially held at the army barracks, where he said soldiers
showed him a corpse and when he was unable to identify the dead man, he was
beaten.
After being
transferred to Epkan police station in Delta State he suffered further torture
and ill-treatment. Moses told one human rights defender that the police
severely beat him with machetes and batons; tied and hanged him for several
hours in interrogation rooms and used pliers to pull-out his fingernails and
toe nails in order to force him to sign two confessions.
Moses’ trial took
place at the High Court in Effurun, Delta State. The investigating officers
failed to show up and Moses was convicted solely on the basis of the victim’s
statement (which Moses’ counsel claims to be full of inconsistencies) and the
two confessions Moses made under duress.
After eight years in
prison, Moses was sentenced to death by hanging. Moses Akatugba was never given
the chance to challenge the Court for the alleged acts of torture suffered
during his detention. Today he sees his family just twice a month, as he sits
and waits on death row. In February 2014, Moses told them:
“The pain of torture is
unbearable. I never thought I would be alive till this day. The pain I went
through in the hands of the officers was unimaginable. In my whole life, I have
never been subjected to such inhuman treatment.”
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