Headline

ECOWAS Awards N20m Damages Against FG Over Bizman’s Death In EFCC Custody

Published

3 years ago

May 25, 2022

The Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States has found the Federal Government liable for the death of a businessman, Desmond Nunugwo, in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in April 2016.

The court, therefore, directed the FG to pay N20m compensation to the deceased’s family.

The 29-page judgment made available to PUNCH Metro on Tuesday was handed down by Justice Edward Asante, who presided over the case and was assisted by Justices Dupe Atoki and Januaria Costa, on March 21, 2022.

By a 2005 ECOWAS Supplemental Protocol, the CCJ has jurisdiction to hear human rights cases and disputes between individuals and their own member states.

Nunugwo was taken into custody by EFCC operatives in Abuja on April 16, 2016, on allegations of defrauding a complainant of N91m.

Barely 24 hours later, he was said to have taken ill and rushed to a hospital, where he died.

The deceased’s family had accused the anti-graft agency then headed by Ibrahim Magu, a retired Assistant Inspector-General of Police, of killing Nunugwo, who was reportedly healthy before his arrest.

But the commission failed to respond to the allegations, prompting the deceased’s siblings, Rose Breivigel and Elizabeth Baumerich, to file an action against the EFCC in March 2019.

Based on the reports of extra-judicial killings in the country, the applicants claimed their brother, who was survived by a wife and four children, was tortured to death.

The case was filed by their lawyers, Oludayo Fagbemi and Holger Hermbach, while Maimuna Shiru represented the FG.

Before filing the suit, the ECOWAS court noted that the applicants reported the death of their brother to the authorities, which failed to investigate the incident.

Moreover, they also lodged a complaint with the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights in February 2017.

Justice Asante noted that in April 2018, an autopsy was carried out without the knowledge of Nunugwo’s family, adding that the result cited hypertension as the cause of death, but provided no additional explanation.

He declared that Nunugwo’s right to life under Article 4 of the African Charter was violated and that the respondent (FG) also breached its duty to investigate this under the same charter.

Asante said, “The court sitting in public after hearing both parties dismissed the allegation of violation of Mr Nunugwo’s right to freedom from torture under Article 5 of the African Charter; dismisses the allegation of the applicant’s right to presumption of innocence under Article 7 of the Charter was violated by the respondent and orders the respondent to pay the lump sum of N20m to the family of Mr Nunugwo as compensation for all the prejudice and damages suffered as a result of his death in violation of Article 4 of the African Charter.”

The EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, had yet to react to the judgment as of the time of filing this report as he did not respond to a request for comment.

But speaking on the development, a rights activist, Olaseni Shalom, said the authorities must follow due process in all their actions, noting that the constitution did not permit torture of suspects.

“The judgment is a victory for justice. I am not encouraging fraud; but whatever we are doing as a country, we must follow due process. We have seen cases where due process was ignored while seeking justice, but that is not justice at all. It is a wake-up call for our law enforcement agencies to always respect human rights,” said Shalom, who is the Executive Director, United Global Resolve for Peace.

PUNCH

Headline

Militia Attack On DRC IDP Camp, Kills 10, Mostly Women, Children

Published

10 hours ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

An armed group at the centre of a long-running ethnic conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s northeast attacked a camp for displaced people on Friday, killing 10, local sources told AFP.

Bordering Uganda, Ituri province has for years been the scene of pitched battles between the Lendu, a group mainly made up of settled farmers, and the Hema people, typically nomadic herders.

The fighting has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and the mass displacement of many more.

Friday’s assault on the Djangi displaced persons camp was carried out by the self-proclaimed Cooperative for the Development of Congo (Codeco), a Lendu-aligned militia responsible for previous civilian massacres, the camp’s head told AFP.

“They were many and armed with firearms and machetes. They surprised us, they killed 10 displaced people, most of them women and children,” said Richard Likana.

An employee of the Red Cross, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed the attack, which took place around 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Bunia.

“They were cut up with machetes while others were shot,” the humanitarian worker added.

Congolese army Colonel Ruffin Mapela, the local administrator for Djugu territory where the camp is located, gave the same toll of 10 dead and put the number of injured at 15.

According to local and humanitarian sources, Codeco was responsible for an attack on February 10 which killed 51 people in Ituri province. Most of the victims were also displaced persons.

That raid was said to be a response to a strike by the rival Hema-led Zaire militia in the same area.

Violence between the Hema and Lendu killed thousands in gold-rich Ituri from 1999-2003, which only ended after European forces intervened.

The conflict erupted again in 2017, killing thousands more.

The violence has led to more than 1.5 million people leaving their homes, according to the UN.

AFP

Headline

Israel Wants Global Action Against Iran’s Nuclear Plans

Published

10 hours ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

Israel’s foreign minister said on Friday that the world was obliged to stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb, days after Israel claimed it had “thwarted Iran’s nuclear project” in a 12-day war.

“Israel acted at the last possible moment against an imminent threat to itself, the region, and the international community,” Gideon Saar wrote on X.

“The international community must now prevent, by any effective means, the world’s most extreme regime from obtaining the most dangerous weapon.”

Israel and Iran each claimed victory in the war that ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

The conflict erupted on June 13 when Israel launched a bombing campaign, stating it aimed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—an ambition Iran has consistently denied.

Following waves of Israeli attacks on nuclear and military sites, the United States bombed three key facilities, with President Donald Trump insisting it had set Iran’s nuclear programme back by “decades”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to the nation after the ceasefire, announced that “we have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project”.

However, there is no consensus as to how effective the strikes were.
On Friday, Iran rejected a request by UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi to visit the bombed facilities, saying it suggested “malign intent”.

The comments from Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi came after parliament approved a bill suspending cooperation with the UN watchdog.

In a post on X following the move, Saar said Iran “continues to mislead the international community and actively works to prevent effective oversight of its nuclear programme”.

Headline

We Would Have Killed Iran’s Supreme Leader If Given Opportunity – Israel

Published

13 hours ago

June 27, 2025

Editor

Defence Minister Israel Katz told media that Israel would have killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during the war between the two countries if the opportunity had presented itself.

“If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan Thursday evening, adding that the military had “searched a lot”.

“Khamenei understood this, went very deep underground, broke off contact with the commanders… so in the end it wasn’t realistic,” Katz told Kan.

He told Israeli television Channel 13 Thursday that Israel would cease its assassination attempts because “there is a difference between before the ceasefire and after the ceasefire”.

Katz had said during the war that Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist”, just days after reports that Washington vetoed Israeli plans to assassinate him.

But on Kan, Katz advised Khamenei to remain inside a bunker.

“He should learn from the late Nasrallah, who sat for a long time deep in the bunker”, he said, referring to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who Israel killed in a Beirut air strike in September 2024.

The movements of the supreme leader, who has not left Iran since he took power, are subject to the tightest security and secrecy.

Katz said Thursday that Israel maintained its aerial superiority over Iran and that it was ready to strike again.

“We won’t let Iran develop nuclear weapons and threaten (Israel) with long-range missiles”, he said.

In his Channel 12 interview, Katz admitted that Israel does not know the location of all of Iran’s enriched uranium, but that its air strikes had destroyed the Islamic republic’s uranium enrichment capabilities.

“The material itself was not something that was supposed to be neutralised,” he said of the enriched uranium.

The impact of Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme has been a subject to debate.

A leaked US intelligence assessment estimated the programme to have set Iran back a few months, while Katz and other Israeli and US public figures said the damage would take years to rebuild.

Israel and Iran each claimed victory in a 12-day war that ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

The war erupted on June 13 when Israel launched a bombing campaign that it said aimed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Iran has consistently denied.