A pastor has accused policemen in Edo State of killing his brother and four others at a checkpoint.
Pastor Ime Imaikop Brownson, younger brother to the deceased, Samuel Imaikop, 42, a farmer, alleged that Imaikop was killed along with four labourers he hired to work on his farm on November 24 by the Edo State Police Command at the Benin Bye Pass.
After killing the five men, the police had bundled them into a police van, drove to police command headquarters and presented them to journalists as suspected robbers.
They had also placed guns beside their corpses.
When the clergy got to the police command and saw his brother’s corpse, he had told the police that his brother was not a robber, but the police had detained and tortured him.
The pastor had since sought the assistance of a nongovernmental organization, the Network on Police Reforms in Nigeria, in seeking for truth and justice over his brother’s killing.
Imaikop was from Nsital Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State and resident in Benin City.
He was married with two wives and had seven children.
His second wife is presently pregnant.
Pastor Brownson along with Imaikop’s first wife, Patience Samuel, said that on November 24, 2013, at about 9am, Imaikop, along with four casual labourers he hired to work for him on his farm, were shot dead by police officers at a checkpoint along Benin Bye-Pass.
The deceased was a supplier of firewood to some restaurants in town.
On that evening at the farm, he loaded some firewood into his bus to be supplied the next day to one of his customers.
He dropped off the four hired labourers and drove home with the firewood.
On Sunday morning, he first went and supplied the firewood at ‘Madam Spot’, along Cemetery Road, Benin.
He supplied the woman firewood two times in a week.
Having dropped the firewood, he stopped over again at ‘2 plus 2’ and picked up the same four labourers to go and complete their job on the farm.
On their way to the farm, somewhere at the Bye Pass, some police officers at a checkpoint opened fire on them, killing all the five men in Imaikop’s bus.
The police officers loaded the dead bodies of the five men into the van and drove to the office of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad at the State Police Headquarters.
At the Police Headquarters, their bodies were dumped on the ground and displayed publicly as armed robbers, with a gun placed on them as exhibit.
Brownson traced the police to the State Police Headquarters where he identified his brother among the dead.
He was shocked and immediately fell down crying.
Some policemen pounced on him and began to beat him, accusing him of being one of the armed robbers.
They dragged him inside the police station and one of the policemen emptied a bag of salt on his head while others were kicking him as he lay flat on the ground at the police station, crying in grief.
He was pleading with the police to ‘forgive’ him, telling them that he was not a robber and that his brother was a farmer and not a robber.
The next day, when his wife came with a lawyer, he was brought out and asked to complete making his statement, after which he was sent back to the cell.
His wife was not allowed to see him or give him food.
The day after that, his wife came back with another lawyer who was not allowed to see him.
Then his wife later came back with another lawyer, one Barrister Afolabi, who eventually secured his release on the fifth day.
He has since then been sick.
NOPRIN spokesman, Okechukwu Nwanguma, said: “It is not clear how the police arrived at the judgment or conclusion that the killed men were armed robbers.
“There was no evidence that they were shot during a robbery operation or that they had a tip off or prior information about them and then laid in wait for them.
“The police have not convinced the family of Samuel Imaikop and members of the public about their claim that those men were armed robbers.
“Instead, they resorted to intimidation by subjecting the late Samuel’s immediate younger brother, Pastor Ime Imaikop Brownson, to brutality, detention and cruel and dehumanising treatment for daring to come to the station to inquire about his dead brother.”
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