Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has forwarded a complaint to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention over the “detention, torture and other ill-treatment of journalist Omoyele Sowore and four other activists.”
Omoyele Sowore, Juwon Sanyaolu, Peter Williams, Emmanuel Bulus and Damilare Adenola were on Monday ordered by a Magistrates’ Court in Wuse Zone 2, Abuja, to be remanded in Kuje Correctional Centre pending the consideration of their bail applications on Tuesday (today).
However, SERAP in a statement on Tuesday by its deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare, said the detention of the activists constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of their liberty because it does not have any legal justification.
In the complaint dated 4 January 2021, SERAP said:
RelatedPosts
“The Working Group should request the Nigerian authorities to withdraw the bogus charges against Mr. Sowore and four other activists, and to immediately and unconditionally release them.”
According to SERAP:
“The arrest, continued detention and torture and ill-treatment of Mr Sowore and four other activists solely for peacefully exercising their human rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly is a flagrant violation of the Nigerian Constitution, 1999 (as amended) and international human rights law. They are now facing bogus charges simply for exercising their human rights.”
