‘How four siblings were killed by police in Taraba’

The audience at the Christopher Awubra panel of inquiry on police brutality in Taraba state was told on Monday how the men of the defunct Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) killed four siblings in February 2014.

According to a representative of the victims’ family, Kabiru Jibril Abdullahi, the deceased were aged between 17 and 19 when they were allegedly killed.

Narrating their ordeals before the panel, Abdullahi said that despite all efforts put in place to seek justice from the leadership of the force, the family pleas were swept under the carpet.

Narrating how the suspect was invited by the Vigilante group to “discuss and resolve” their differences, the family said the police failed to tread the paths of justice when the four youths were handed over to them.

Abdullahi alleged that “a team of vigilante led by one Sani Abdullahi invited our brothers to appear before them so as to discuss and resolve some fundamental issues between them.”

The youths, after interrogation by the vigilante, were said to have been handed over to SARS for further interrogation to ascertain whether they are guilty of the theft offence they were accused of.

The siblings, according to Abdullahi, were handcuffed by SARS. They were taken to a station after a search of their homes yielded nothing incriminating.”

Battling with the tears drooling down his cheeks, he said “when we eventually found their bodies, we discovered that they were all riddled with bullets and in pools of blood deposited in the Moslems graveyard by the SARS for burial.”

The petitioner’s counsel, Suleiman Sani Dikko, called on the panel to do the needful by attending to the demands of the family.

Citing both Sections 33 (1) and 36 (5), he felt sad that the police decided to terminate the lives of the youths without “regards to their constitutional rights to life as enshrined in the above sections of the constitution.”

The “police or SARS as affirmed by him” has no constitutional rights to try any person suspected of committing offence or even order the execution or killing of any suspect without being properly arraigned before a court of competent jurisdiction for just and proper determination of the case in order to ascertain the guiltiness or otherwise of the person accused of committing an offence.”