By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS, Nigeria (AA) - A Nigerian court on Thursday sentenced two policemen to death over the killing of six traders in the capital city, Abuja in 2005.
The court discharged and acquitted three other cops who were tried in the celebrated murder case that had triggered national outcry, forcing authorities to set up a probe panel that indicted the policemen and ordered their trial. The policemen had long been dismissed on account of the panel's report before the trial began.
The victims were reportedly returning from a night party on June 8, 2005 when they were shot by policemen who claimed the men were armed robbers. But investigation later revealed that the victims were attacked because of a prior disagreement with one of the cops at a pub.
Four of the victims died on the spot while the other two survived the gunshots but were later taken elsewhere and shot again by the policemen who then planted guns on them, according to the probe panel.
Federal High Court Justice Ishaq Bello said two of the cops - Ezekiel Achejene and Emmanuel Baba - were found guilty of killing two of the six traders on account of their own confession that they fired at the victims on the order of a superior officer.
The judge said their retraction of earlier confessions during the oral examination was an “afterthought”, adding that their reliance on acting on a "superior order to be discharged or acquitted was a folly” because it could not help them.
The judge freed Danjuma Ibrahim, Nicholas Zakaria and Sadiq Salami for lack of evidence directly linking them to the murder.
The sixth cop, Othman Abdussalam, was never arraigned as he had long run away in the thick of the controversy.
The ruling is subject to appeal at the higher courts.