The Nigerian navy says it does
not know the whereabouts of the 15 citizens who have been detained for seven
months without trial.
According to PUNCH, Suleman
Dahun, navy’s director of information, disclosed this on Monday claiming that
the detainees had disappeared from custody.
“We don’t know where they are,”
PUNCH quoted him to have said.
The detainees including Dada
Labinjo, a navy captain, and Sherifat Ibe Lambert (also known as Mrs Bola
Labinjo), a lt. commander, have been in detention since September 2018 for an
undisclosed offence.
Femi Falana, human rights lawyer,
had raised the alarm over their detention, calling on Abubakar Malami,
attorney-general of the federation (AGF), to take action against the naval
personnel responsible for the “violations of the fundamental rights of the
detainees”.
He said the naval authorities had
obtained a remand warrant from a magistrate’s court in Apapa, Lagos, but after
three months of incarceration without any criminal charges filed against the
detainees, the court reviewed their case on January 7, 2019, and ordered the
naval authorities to immediately release them.
According to him, not only did
the authorities disobey the second court order, Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas,chief of
naval staff, ordered that they be transferred to another military detention
facility in Abuja.
Before now, the navy had refused
to make comment on the matter. The detainees have been denied access to their
lawyers and family members.
When reached out to earlier, Dahun had declined to speak on the issue,
saying:
“I will get back to you.”
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