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IV. Arrest and torture following protest at US embassy in Abuja

U.S. President George W. Bush visited Nigeria just days after the demonstrations about the fuel price increase, as part of a planned tour of several African countries between July 7 and 12, 2003. The Nigerian government was therefore especially sensitive to the atmosphere in the country during this period—a sensitivity which was manifested in a further crackdown against individuals openly criticizing the government.

On July 3, while the strike and protests were still going on, a group of protestors, made up of private individuals from different walks of life under the name Concerned Youth Alliance of Nigeria, went to the U.S. embassy in Abuja to protest against President Bush’s visit, on the grounds that it conferred undeserved legitimacy on President Obasanjo’s government. In a five-page letter to President Bush, which they delivered to the embassy, they expressed their disappointment at the widespread fraud during the recent elections, highlighted human rights violations by the police, and appealed to President Bush to reconsider his visit to Nigeria.²⁸

Despite the entirely peaceful nature of the protest, around thirty protestors were arrested and detained for two weeks; some of them were tortured, on instructions from the highest levels of the police force, as indicated in the testimonies below. The torture was intended to force them to reveal the names of those who had organized their protest; they were repeatedly accused of being sponsored by political opposition parties. The nature of the interrogation they underwent indicates clearly that their arrest was politically motivated and intended to avoid any further negative publicity for the Nigerian government during President Bush’s visit. The police tried hard to claim that the protest had been organized by opposition parties, a claim consistently denied by the protestors, who describe themselves as professionals of different backgrounds who were simply protesting President Bush’s visit.²⁹ The police also put pressure on the ANPP to admit that they had been behind the protest (see above).³⁰

Human Rights Watch spoke to some of the protestors after their release. One of them described how they were arrested after delivering their letter of protest to staff at the U.S. embassy:

There were about 200 to 250 people in the protest. There would have been more but some were obstructed on the way. We got to the U.S. embassy and talked to an official who came out. We approached the personnel and asked for an audience with the Consul General […] We filled in the form to request a meeting. We came out with our placards. We just said we wanted to deliver our letter. The police initially didn’t agree, but a U.S. embassy official came out and we explained to him why we were there. We read the letter out loud. He listened and was very receptive. We explained that we had feared being arrested. We had applied to the authorities for authorization to demonstrate, but they had not granted it. So we decided to write a letter about Bush’s visit. The embassy official took the letter. It was very peaceful, and we asked people to disperse peacefully.

We left. Less than two kilometres away, within Aso Drive, near the flyover, the police arrested us. They were mobile police. They arrested twenty-nine people, but released them after our coordinator appealed to the police. Then they arrested another thirty people […]³¹

The protestors in this second group, who included three women, were then detained for two weeks. They were held in police custody in various locations in Abuja, including the Maitama Area Command, the zonal police headquarters in Zone 3, the police station in Asokoro, and the police force Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in Area 10.³²

On July 7, the police arrested one of the coordinators of the demonstration, whom they had not been able to arrest earlier because he had travelled outside Abuja after the protest. They came to find him at his home:

On the Monday morning, at 8 a.m., nine heavily-armed mobile police came to my house. They included a chief superintendent of police, an assistant superintendent and the assistant commissioner of police in charge of the Inspector General of Police’s monitoring unit. They arrested me like a criminal. They didn’t even let me put on my shirt or shoes. I was wearing only my trousers. They took me to the force headquarters. They knew my name, and asked me if I knew one of the other coordinators (by name). They told me I was under arrest.

At the police headquarters, I was taken to the IG [Inspector General] himself. I was questioned first by the assistant commissioner, then by the IG, at the same time. The assistant commissioner asked me a series of questions: “Do you know the names called by the lady? [one of the other protestors who had been forced to give names to the police] You must have been sponsored by a political party or top individuals of opposition parties.” I explained we weren’t sponsored by anybody. I asked what offence I had committed and said I would sue the IG and the president for unlawful detention. The IG said: “Take him and he should be squeezed.” They asked whether I was sponsored by Buhari [leader of the ANPP], Ojukwu [leader of APGA, another opposition party] etc. I denied that I was sponsored by anyone. […] They tried to force me to mention names. I said I would rather die than indict innocent people. That was when the IG said I should be squeezed. The assistant commissioner had also asked about another coordinator of our protest (by name) because she had given an interview on the BBC and Reuters about the arrests. He told me I must give them information about her.

I was taken to the anti-robbery squad, room 40 or 41. I was interrogated there and told to mention the names of those who had sponsored me. It was just me with four interrogators. They asked the investigative police officer (IPO) to bring handcuffs to hang me. The IPO said he didn’t have any handcuffs. They used another instrument. They brought it close to my body. I felt like my blood stopped flowing. I don’t know what to call it. It looked like a metal detector. They held it in their hand. You feel it in your brain. They just brought it very close to my hands, my chest and my legs. I fainted. One of them said: “I’ll shoot your legs if you don’t give us names.” I stayed there from 5 p.m. until about 6.30 or 7 p.m.

Then I was taken to Asokoro police station. They took me the back way, through the basement, into a vehicle with tinted windows. I was handed to the DPO [divisional police officer]. The cell was full. There were more than forty people there. It was Cell 1. I was held there for forty-eight hours. I was standing up all the time. We couldn’t even sit down […]

After two days, I was allowed to receive visits from my friends. I could talk to them for just two or three minutes behind the counter. The police listened but they were sympathetic. They said they had received orders from above. I was not tortured in the police station.

There was a court order to release us unconditionally or charge us to court, but the police defied it. They took us to court on the ninth day. It was the chief magistrate’s court in Zone 2. We were taken there on Tuesday [July 15]. They accused us of three offences: unlawful assembly, conspiracy and incitement to disrupt public peace. Originally they had included treason but they dropped this. Thirty-one of us appeared in court with heavily-armed mobile police surrounding us with AK47s. We couldn’t move an inch. They were in court with us. We all pleaded not guilty. The judge said we had only exercised our rights according to section 40 of the Constitution. The police confirmed that we had not had any weapons. We were discharged and acquitted. […]³³

Our lawyers were told by the police that they couldn’t release us until Bush had been and gone, because they didn’t want to be embarrassed.³⁴

Several other male protestors were tortured. One of those detained in a police cell in Zone 3 was severely beaten by the police; a fellow detainee heard him screaming “please, please, pardon me if I cannot tell you!” ³⁵ Another detainee, held in a different location in Abuja, sustained injuries to his eyes and ears after being slapped very hard; he reported that he temporarily lost his hearing. On the day he was arrested, he was forced to stay in a squatting position all night, until the following morning.³⁶

At least one other protestor, who was among the group arrested on July 3, also reported that the IG had personally ordered their torture:

On the day of my arrest, I was taken to the IG’s office in the police force HQ. It was only me who was taken inside his office, but there were three other boys [other protestors] in the waiting room. Inside the office, the IG and several SSS [State Security Services] were there. The IG accused us of wanting to disrupt the country. He told his boys [the police] they should squeeze me and throw me in the cell where I should die. He didn’t interview me. I spent only about five minutes in there.

The police interviewed me before and after. Initially, a commissioner of police interviewed me, then the IG said I should be taken to the monitoring unit. The other police commissioners and SSS came there. They questioned me. They asked who sponsored us. I said nobody. They asked how much we paid people to go on the protest. I said nothing. They asked did Buhari send you. I said no. They said we deliberately organized the protest to set the country back. They asked for the names of other protestors. […]

They put me in a cell in Zone 3, for about twelve days. There were fourteen of us in the cell. They didn’t torture me, but they forced me to sleep on the bare floor. Other people were tortured. […]

When I was released, the assistant commissioner of police from the Monitoring Unit threatened me. He said: “If you go for any other protest, I will come after you personally.”³⁷

In meetings with Human Rights Watch, Commissioner of Police for Operations Lawrence Alobi denied that anyone had been tortured following the protest at the U.S. embassy, but stressed that the organizers had not been granted a police permit to protest there.³⁸

Human Rights Watch also raised these cases with the U.S. embassy in Abuja, as the arrests had occurred in connection with the protest there. When we first inquired with staff at the embassy soon after the arrests, we were told that the embassy was aware of the situation, that they believed the protestors had been arrested because they did not have a permit to assemble, but that the embassy could not take any action as none of those arrested were U.S. citizens.³⁹ Once the detainees had been released, Human Rights Watch informed U.S. embassy officials that several of them had been tortured, as described above. The embassy officials told Human Rights Watch that they would look into the case. They said that their chief security officer (who had since left the embassy) had talked to the protestors and had asked about the arrests when they occurred, but it appeared that the embassy had not followed the case closely since then.⁴⁰ U.S. President George Bush is not known to have raised human rights issues with the Nigerian government during his visit to Abuja in July.