BY Femi Owolabi
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.
TheCable had earlier reached out to Dahun but he declined to speak on the issue, saying:
“I will get back to you.”
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