The International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety), a civil society organisation has alleged that security agents have continued to arrest scores of innocent Igbo youths, labelling them members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
It said that it has received hundreds of phone calls from families whose loved ones were arrested and detained on the pretext that they were IPOB members.
Mr Emeka Umeagbalasi, Board of Trustees Chairman of the group disclosed this in a statement in Onitsha, Anambra State on Monday.
Umeagbalasi said the indiscriminate arrest, torture and even extrajudicial killing is not only limited to Monday’s sit-at-home protest but has been on since the beginning of this year, just as it listed some names of victims of arrest and detention.
“We have received over 100 phone calls and messages from members of the public testifying in favour of the abducted and slain citizens named above.
“Intersociety hereby calls on the Nigeria Police Force and Nigerian Army to immediately and unconditionally release all the citizens named above and desist from perpetration and perpetuation of such dastardly acts including frame-ups and trumped-up allegations or charges, spilling of innocent blood as a mark of gallantry, abductions and disappearances, extrajudicial killings and other forms of genocidal operations going on in the East.”
The group titled the statement: Graphic Details of how soldiers, Police, others in the East hatefully/falsely label & abduct innocent citizens and spill their blood for gallantry.
“These have led to not less than 170 open killings, secret abduction and permanent disappearance or feared unlawful execution in the custody of no fewer than 550 and general arrest/abduction of not less than 2100.
“The arrested/abducted are presently held in different open and secret dungeons located within and outside the East and among those outside the East are Makurdi Prisons in Benue State where over 300 were recently found to have been transferred and kept.
“Others are conventional and unconventional military, police and SSS detention facilities in Abuja, Niger State and other undisclosed locations in the North. They are also in Owerri, Awka, Port Harcourt and Abakiliki State CIDs and Prison or Correctional facilities such as Owerri Prisons holding over 130 including 107 remanded days ago.
“Shockingly, in the past one week or Monday 24th to Sunday 30th May 2021, not less than 30 open and secret killings by soldiers and police have taken place with most taking place in Imo State where scores of corpses have been freshly traced to the mortuaries of the Government Medical Centers,” the statement read.
