Stakeholders train police officers on anti-torture act

By : Ngozi Egenuka

Date: 13 July 2021 4:01am WAT

NIGERIA-LIBYA-MIGRATION-UNEMPLOYMENT-CRIME

A woman and her child rest on June 26, 2019 in Benin City, at one of the shelters of the Society For the Empowerment Of Young Persons (SEYP), an organisation that rehabilitates and reintegrates women returning from Libya carrying young children often born as the result of rape. - More than 14,000 young Nigerians, most of them between the ages of 17 and 35, have returned to their home country through the United Nations Voluntary Return programme, after living in hell in Libya, stranded during months, sometimes years, unable to turn around or cross the Mediterranean. Back in their country, they find themselves faced with a life even more difficult than when they left: riddled with debt, unemployed, broken by the tortures of their traffickers and by their stranded dreams, and victims of the glance of a society that nicknamed them "the returned ones" or the "deportees". (Photo by FATI ABUBAKAR / AFP)

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In a bid to strengthen the integrity and transparency of interrogation processes, the Human Rights Advocacy group, Access to Justice (A2J), in collaboration with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and National Committee Against Torture (NCAT), has trained about 190 police officers on the Anti-torture Act and other legislations that prohibit torture.

The workshop, which was supported by The Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (ROLAC), was targeted at safeguarding crime suspects from abuse, oppression and exploitation by investigating police officers.

Sponsored by the British Council and the European Union, the workshop was conducted at the Lagos State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Panti, Yaba.

According to both facilitators of the training, Damian Ugwu and Idris Bala, who spoke on “Human Rights and the Local Legislations Prohibiting Torture”, no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or threat to war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, might be invoked as a justification for torture.

The facilitators noted that a person who suffered torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment might seek legal assistance in the proper handling and filing of the complaint from the Human Rights Commission.

The facilitators admonished the officers to abstain from any such acts of torture such as systematic beating, punching, kicking with rifle butts, electric shocks, cigarette burning, rape or sexual abuse, submersion of head in water or urine, mutilation etc.

“Any person who contravenes Section 2 of the Anti-Torture Act commits an offence and is liable upon conviction to imprisonment for terms not exceeding 25 years.

“Torture resulting in the loss of life of a person is considered as murder and shall be tried and punished under the relevant laws”, they said.