A federal high court sitting in
Abuja has ordered the Department of State Services (DSS) to pay N10 million in
damages for the illegal detention of Jones Abiri, a Bayelsa-based journalist.
Abiri, publisher of Weekly Source
Newspaper, was in July 2016 arrested by the DSS.
He was accused of heading the
joint revolutionary council of the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force,
threatening oil companies and demanding money from them.
Abiri was arraigned for the first
time in July following public outcry, and was granted bail in August.
He had asked the court to compel
the federal government to pay him N200 million as compensation for spending two
years in detention.
In the application, Abiri said
the DSS violated his rights and tortured him.
Ruling on his case on Thursday,
Nnamdi Dimgba, the presiding judge, said the federal government had no right to
detain Abiri for two years.
Dimgba described Abiri’s
detention as an outright conviction.
“Having taken his statement, the
applicant should have been arraigned,” Dimgba said.
The judge said the federal
government’s claim that Abiri was detained in national interest was baseless.
He said the federal government
should have filed a suit against the defendant and prayed the court to refuse
him bail.
Dimgba said it was left to that
the court to use its discretion in determining whether Abiri should be granted
bail or not.
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