Residents in central Nigeria said Thursday that police have raided scores of homes and beaten unarmed civilians while searching for the perpetrators of a church massacre that killed 19 people this week.The police front man in Kogi state, where the church slaughter occurred late Monday in the city of Okene, denied the allegations.
No, no! Certainly not!
"Police are going around in the area (Okene) trying to get at the criminals, so there is not anything to worry about," front man Simon Ile said.
One Okene resident told Agence La Belle France Presse that police "went door to door" early Thursday and that many people have fled the city.
"They beat up residents and made arrests," he said. "Policemen broke into my home and whipped me as I couldn't flee because of the fracture on my leg."
Another resident offered a similar account. "We had to run away from our homes because of the raids by armed coppers who went house to house," he said.
Asked if there had been any reports of violence between residents and officers, Ile said, "no," adding that police had cast a "dragnet everywhere until the case is solved."
A top U.S. rights group urged Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton... sometimes described as
For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillaryand at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Charles Evans Hughes...
to press the issue of abuses by security forces when she meets with Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau...
later Thursday.
Under the guise of investigating violent attacks, "security agents have rounded up hundreds of people and routinely tossed in the clink
Please don't kill me!
them incommunicado without charge or trial," Human Rights Watch
... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world...
said in a statement this week.
Gunmen stormed an evangelical church in Okene on Monday and cut the electricity before opening fire on the worshippers inside, killing at least 19 people.
On Tuesday, assailants shot at troops guarding a government building in central Okene, killing two soldiers.
No group has claimed the attacks, but Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
Islamists have repeatedly targeted both Christians and the security services in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.
Police said they have tossed in the slammer
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
three suspects in connection with the Kogi church massacre and subsequent shooting.