NIGERIA: Shortly after midnight on June 8th Officer Danjuma Ibrahim fired an automatic rifle into a carload of six young people at a police checkpoint in Abuja. The driver, Ifeanyi Ozor (25), died instantly. His fiancée, Augustina Arebun (22), bloodied but alive, let out a wail of anguish.
Over the next few hours, officers involved later testified, police drove Arebun and the other passengers to a remote location and executed them all. They planted guns and knives in the bullet-riddled car, posed the bodies around it for official pictures and announced that six dangerous armed robbers had been "killed in combat" with police.
In the past, according to human rights groups, such crimes would never have been investigated or exposed. Each year hundreds of people die at the hands of police officers, with no official acknowledgment or action.
But this time, because of a brief, desperate cell-phone call made by one victim shortly before he was killed, the truth began to emerge, and public pressure mounted, ultimately cracking what human rights activists said had long been an impenetrable wall of official impunity.
The government convened an unprecedented commission of inquiry, where the police version of events unravelled. This month Ibrahim (44) and four other officers are due to go on trial on charges of culpable homicide.
Nigeria has a history of brutal military and police behaviour, ethnic divisions and economic inequality. In the six years since democracy replaced military rule, President Olusegun Obasanjo has sought to tackle corruption, liberalise the economy and elevate Nigeria's international profile.
But in that time both violent crime and police abuses have worsened, Nigerians say. The size of the police force has more than doubled, but training remains poor, and investigative tools such as fingerprinting and autopsies are uncommon. Even critics acknowledge that brutal police tactics are accepted, perhaps even expected, by Nigerians frightened of rising crime.
Police officials initially defended Ibrahim and the other officers, but they no longer dispute the basic facts. Ibrahim and four others are facing criminal charges.
A sixth escaped from police custody in mysterious circumstances. A seventh, who had co-operated with the attorney for the victims' families, was fatally poisoned shortly before he was to testify.
The president condemned the killings in August, saying: "The full weight of the law will be brought to bear on all who are found to have been involved in the perpetration of this most heinous crime."
On the night of June 8th the friends had something to celebrate: the arrival of Ifeanyi Ozor's fiancée for a visit from Lagos. The group of six left Apo about 7pm in a borrowed grey Peugeot. Five were never heard from again.
Edwin Meniru's telephone rang about 1am. The caller was Anthony Nwokike (23), a friend of Meniru's younger brother, Chinedu. Nwokike was in the car that had been stopped at the checkpoint. Speaking rapidly, he said the driver had been shot in a confrontation with the police and that Chinedu (21) was wounded but alive.
Then the phone went dead. Meniru immediately started getting word to other dealers of car parts in Apo. The next day, when a truck carrying six corpses appeared at a cemetery there, the dealers became suspicious.
They were told the bodies were those of armed robbers, but when one young man pulled back a cloth, he recognised Ozor. Meniru arrived soon after to identify his brother's corpse, with bullet wounds in the right thigh and stomach.
In a rage, dozens of young men seized the truck, with the bodies still in the back, and pushed it to the Apo police station, which they set on fire. Police fired into the crowd, killing two rioters. The police reclaimed the original six bodies and buried them in another district, but news reports of the incident aroused public attention.
Pressure for official action did not subside. The parts dealers wrote a formal letter demanding an inquiry.
The victims' families hired an aggressive lawyer, sued the government for damages and spoke to the press. They also went to court to demand that the bodies be exhumed for autopsy and that the police be brought to trial.
The police continued to stonewall, but by the end of June, when the officer who had promised to reveal the truth was poisoned, the political spotlight had grown too bright to ignore.
In testimony before the independent judicial commission, several officers recanted earlier statements and revealed the facts.
Ibrahim blamed the deaths on the other officers, but their testimony pointed to him as the shooter.
There was confusing evidence suggesting possible motives: that Ibrahim had made romantic advances to Arebun, or that his BMW had been scratched while blocking the victims' car, or that Ozor had slapped him in a moment of foolish bravado.
The victims' families have asked authorities publicly to acknowledge that the victims were not robbers, to provide them with a proper reburial and to pay about $714,000 in compensation for each of the dead.
They are also seeking the death penalty for the officers, hoping it might deter others from abusing their power. And, as a final reminder, they have asked that a thoroughfare in the capital be renamed "Apo Six Street". - (LA Times-Washington Post Service)