Hundreds of Nigerian prisoners are being held on death row many of whom have been tortured or whose trials were not conducted properly.
“The police are overstretched and under-resourced. Because of this, they rely heavily on confessions to ’solve’ crimes – rather than on expensive investigations,” Ms van Kregten said.
Ledap, the Nigerian legal organisation which co-authored the report, says that under Nigerian law, confessions under torture cannot be used as evidence in court
Judges know that there is widespread torture by the police – and yet they continue to sentence suspects to death based on these confessions, leading to many possibly innocent people being sentenced to death,” Ledap’s national co-ordinator Chino Obiagwu said.
The report ties in with an interview I did last year with Damien Ugwu from the Nigerian Civil Liberties Organisation on torture by police in Nigeria. Damien highlighted the police tendency to target young men, poor people as criminals. The torture statistics are extremely high with 99% of people detained by the police were likely to experience physical or mental torture. Most of the torture is performed by by junior ranking police officers many of whom have not had proper training plus they are under pressure to get results. Although there is no official policy there is a culture of torture with most police stations having a torture chamber and an officer in charge of torture.
