The Federal High Court, Abuja, on Thursday sentenced two policemen to death and discharged three others over the killing of six traders in Apo, Federal Capital Territory, in 2005.
Those condemned to death are Emmanuel Baba and Ezekiel Acheneje, while Danjuma Ibrahim, Nicholas Zakariah and Sadiq Salami were discharged.
The five were among six arraigned over the killing of the traders on June 7, 2005 on suspicion that they were armed robbers.
The sixth person on the charge sheet, Othman Abdulsalam, who was the Divisional Police Officer in Apo, is still on the run.
Twelve years since the night of what has become the infamous “Apo Six”, the trial has been bogged down by several institutional challenges (ranging from series of adjournments, conveyance of defendants from the prison to court and difficulty in getting witnesses to testify) that have come to regrettably define the administration of criminal justice in the country.
The lead prosecuting counsel, Chief Chris Uche (SAN), in a recent interview to mark the 11th anniversary of the alleged killings, said the trial of six police officers namely: Danjuma Ibrahim, Othman Abdulsalami (still at large); Nicholas Zacharia, Emmanuel Baba, Emmanuel Acheneje and Sadiq Salami at the Abuja High Court had suffered several adjournments.
The deceased, aged between 21 and 25 years, were returning from a night party in 2005 when they were allegedly gunned down by the accused.
Uche who is prosecuting the case alongside Chief Mamman Usman (SAN) on behalf of the Federal Government, said that the infamous case of the Apo Six was a peculiar one, owing to the particular circumstances of the matter.
He had said: “You all know that this is a case of multiple murders committed by serving policemen at the time. Even to get witnesses for the prosecution of the case was a challenge in itself, because most of the persons who we eventually got as witnesses were also serving police officers. But that notwithstanding, we had made progress in the sense the Federal Government realizes the seriousness of this case because, the whole idea was to use this case as a test case to sound a note of warning in view of the rampant reoccurrence of extrajudicial killings by policemen and other security agencies. So, there was need to demonstrate through this case that that has to stop.”