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Nigeria charges 80 separatists with treason
09 May 2005 17:18:15 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Chukwujama Eze

ENUGU, Nigeria, May 9 (Reuters) - Nigeria charged 80 people on Monday with treason for staging a rally for the secession of the oil producing southeast disguised as a religious crusade, police and a court witness said.

The charges, which could mean life imprisonment if proven, are the government's latest attempt to muzzle the Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), a popular group seeking peaceful secession.

Officers swooped on the activists as they gathered in a social club in Ebonyi state capital Abakaliki on Sunday, state police commissioner Paul Ifeghohisaid.

"They came to the state under the guise of a religious crusade, but through our own intelligence report we discovered that they came to hold a MASSOB rally," he said by telephone.

"I am not against any assembly or association, but the law stipulates that before you hold any political rally you must obtain a police permit. In this case they did not apply for one and none was approved for them," Ifeghohi said.

MASSOB was not immediately available for comment.

It is common to see large groups of worshippers thronging in churches, social clubs and public spaces for Sunday services in the Christian-dominated south of Nigeria. But this group unfurled Biafran banners, flags and uniforms instead of evangelical materials, a police spokesman said.

The police commissioner had originally said the activists would be charged with holding an illegal gathering, but a court witness said they were also charged with treason, which carries a maximum life sentence.

MASSOB draws support predominantly from the Ibo tribe indigenous to the southeast, and plays on ethnic tensions that caused the 1967-1970 civil war in which more than a million people died.

Advocating the break-up of Nigeria is considered to be treason by some legal experts, who argue that it implies waging war on the rest of the country.

CUSTODY

The judge remanded the suspects in custody, adjourned the case indefinitely and transferred it to the state director of public prosecutions, the court witness said.

Rallies organised by political, ethnic and religious groups are routinely denied permits by police in Africa's most populous nation on security grounds. Several attempts by unions to protest against government economic policies last year were teargassed by police.

MASSOB is gaining support in the southeast, which has a population of about 30 million, despite the government's frequent arrests of its members and attempts to stifle media coverage.

A MASSOB stay-at-home protest last August brought most major southeastern cities to a standstill.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, himself a former military ruler who led government forces against Biafran troops during the civil war, has seen his popularity slump since taking office in 1999 because of widespread poverty and corruption.

Civil society groups accuse him of paying lip service to democracy and ruling the world's eighth largest oil exporter as a "civilian dictator".

Five years after the end of military rule, Nigerian security forces still practise torture, rape and unlawful killings with impunity, human rights groups say. The State Security Service was last week added to a blacklist of enemies of press freedom by media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

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