[ 2014-09-18 ]

Amnesty International: Nigeria’s torture chambers exposed in new report

- Nigeria’s torture chambers exposed in new
report (press release)
- Facts and figures
- Testimony from the Torture Chambers of Nigeria
- "Welcome to hell fire": Torture and other
ill-treatment in Nigeria (report)

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, Amnesty
International said in a new report published
today.

“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.”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
FACTS AND FIGURES

18 September 2014

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

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
18 September

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.”

Source - AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

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