Ex-SARS operatives killed for fun, traded corpses in morgues –Report
A coalition of civil society groups, Action Group on Free Civic Space, has disclosed that the operatives of the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad allegedly killed at will and dumped corpses in morgues in exchange for cash.
AGFCS in its 2021 report tagged, ‘#EndSARS: Police brutality, protests and shrinking civic space in Nigeria’ accused the ex-SARS officials of gross violation of people’s liberties by holding suspects incommunicado and denying them access to their family members and lawyers.
The report, launched in Lagos on Friday, also alleged that the disbanded anti-robbery police unit was wont to incriminate innocent persons, keep them in crowded cells while routinely meting out different forms of torture to them.
The unit, said to be notorious for human rights abuse, was dissolved following widespread outrage against police brutalities during the #EndSARS protest in October 2020.
The report, which focused mainly on the alleged atrocities of SARS units at police commands in the southern states of the country, featured accounts of victims and families of detainees who died in police custody.
A late officer-in-charge of SARS in Enugu was accused of killing suspects for fun in connivance with one DSP Chukwu.
A freed suspect and eyewitness was quoted as saying on condition of anonymity for security reasons, “There was a day four kidnappers were arrested and brought to SARS. The late officer announced that one of them would die that day. He then wrote ‘life’ on three sheets of paper and ‘death’ on one. He folded the papers and asked the guys to pick one each. He then told the person who picked ‘death’ that he would die that night. That very night, about 11pm, they called out the guy and took him to the theatre – a room inside the detention facility also known as the death chamber – and shot him dead.”
The report further claimed that SARS was a willing tool of oppression in the hands of politicians and an instrument for settling personal or civil grievances.
It stated that beyond the routine practices of extortion, torture and several acts of violence against victims, incidents tracked during the fact-finding mission pointed to other grisly activities of SARS.
The report added, “Of particular significance is the alleged commerce involving sale of dead bodies of poor detainees who were unable to pay their way out of detention and are sold in a thriving, unregulated morgue market as cadavers…. Two Enugu SARS survivors attested to the existence of this practice. They told AGFCS team how a SARS officer forced them to convey corpses to a mortuary in Enugu.” Punch
