The
Amnesty International has opposed the court martial of 12 soldiers and the
death penalty imposed by a military court in Abuja.
The
military court, three weeks ago, convicted 12 solders for mutiny after they
fired shots at their General Officer Commanding (GOC) in Borno State.
The
Amnesty International Media Director, Susana Flood, at the weekend, said the
organisation was opposed to death penalty notwithstanding the offence.
The
statement reads: “The reason we have not said anything about the conviction is
because we are unable to monitor the trial to be able to say it is fair, which
is very important for us. We have to back our comment with fact.
“We oppose
death penalty in all instances. In case of the soldiers, we are opposing their
death sentence. We are looking at the trial to study all that transpired”.
She noted
that human right abuse would not just end one day, but scored the organisation
high on the success recorded.
“If you
look at our work on the death penalty and you examine the statistics when we
started campaign against death penalty, which was over 20 years and compare to
now, you will see that a number of countries executing prisoners have
decreased.
“Sadly,
Nigeria is still executing. Eliminating death has been a slow bit of progress,
but you can see the achievement we have made around the world”.
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