[ad_1]
New York, June 6, 2019 – Nigerian authorities must investigate police officers suspected of badaulting and threatening journalist Kofi Bartels and holding them responsible, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists said today. .
On June 5, a group of at least five police officers punched and kicked Bartels, a reporter for private radio station Nigeria Info, hit him on the knee with pieces and arrested him for filming, according to the reporter, who spoke with CPJ on the phone and posted on Twitter the attack.
At the police station, a police officer told Bartels that the journalist "posed problems for a long time," citing Bartels' work covering the police in Rivers State, and announced that they would place the reporter in a cell with an inmate. who would violate it, Bartels told CPJ.
The officers did not charge Bartels with a crime and released him around 2 pm, after their former commander's intervention, about four hours after the incident began, Bartels said. Bartels told CPJ that he went to the hospital after his release, where doctors examined his bruised knees and recommended that he receive X-rays of the neck and spine, that he must endure tomorrow.
"The police involved in this alleged aggression against Kofi Bartels must be brought promptly to justice," said Angela Quintal, coordinator of CPJ's Africa program in Johannesburg. "The initial badault of a journalist who documents police behavior, compounded by shameless retaliation for previous reports, is a terrifying example of an ever-increasing trend in the violence of police services." Nigerian security against journalists. "
Bartels said that the incident had begun while he was filming the officers he identified as members of Nigeria's special anti-theft brigade, hitting a boy in front of the home from Bartel to Port Harcourt. The police saw him filming, beaten and taken to brigandage headquarters where, after learning that Bartels had a history of reporting on the police, threatened and beat him again with their hands and sticks. wood, "he told CPJ.
Nnamdi Omoni, a spokesman for the Rivers State Police, told CPJ today that five men from the special anti-theft brigade were currently being held in custody. an investigation for the alleged attack against Bartels, but that they had denied committing wrongdoing. Omoni said that the internal accountability mechanism of the police force would judge the officers, but that Bartels could also pursue his case in a civil court.
Commissioner Usman A. Belel of the Rivers State Police is aware of the situation and information from an investigation is expected to be available after a week, Omoni said.
Bartels' alleged badault allegedly took place a few days after Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission reported to President Muhammadu Buhari on the methods of reforming the anti-robbery brigade, according to reports. information published in the press. The report is the result of "allegations of human rights violations perpetrated by officers and men of SARS," Buhari said on Twitter.
Earlier this year, journalists told CPJ that they had been harbaded and detained by Nigerian security forces while covering elections in the country. Last year, the Nigerian police arrested a group of 10 journalists covering Buhari and badaulted two, CPJ reported at the time.
Source link
