The
Legal Battle Between The Department of State Services, DSS and Sahara Reporters
Founder, Omoyele Sowore; Femi Falana and Activist Deji Adeyanju Arrives Court
With Members Of African Action Congress (AAC).
It was reported on Friday that the Department of State Services charged Sowore on
seven counts bordering on conspiracy to commit treason, cyberstalking President
Muhammadu Buhari, and also insulting him in a television interview.
Sowore
was arrested in Lagos on August 3, 2019, for planning a series of peaceful
protests against bad governance in Nigeria.
Meanwhile,
EReporters had earlier reported that Sowore, a presidential candidate of the
African Action Congress, AAC in the last general election said “I was abducted
in the middle of the night. I was taken to one of your facilities in Lagos. I
was beaten up, rough-handled on my way to the facility in the car. And my
cousin, who was in the room with me, was also beaten and handcuffed, and my
properties were forcefully seized. And when I got there, of course, the
maltreatment continued, they threw me on a cold floor and locked the door.
“I
had no contact with even the guards for two nights; I was in that facility
before I was flown here by your agents. So, I was seriously maltreated,” Sowore
reportedly said during an interrogation session by DSS operatives.
The
National Legal Adviser of African Action Congress, the political party on whose
platform Sowore contested the presidential race in this year’s general
elections, Inibehe Effiong shared the “Transcript from DSS Interrogation of
Sowore Upon Abduction – Excerpt 1,” on his Facebook page on Monday.
According
to the transcript, Sowore was interrogated by five DSS operatives in the
presence of his lawyer, one “Barrister Sam.”
One
Usman Usman, a DSS operative, who led the interrogation, was said to have told
Sowore that, “We’ll be asking you questions and our advice is for you to be
truthful to the best of your knowledge. We’ll not force you to say anything.
Whatever question we ask and you have a problem with or you don’t have an
answer to or you don’t want to answer, there is no compulsion, you simply tell
us you’re not going to answer these questions.”
When
asked by Usman to say “If in the course of your being here anybody has molested
you in any way or maltreated you?” Sowore said, “Yes,” and went on to give the
response above.
On
whether he was denied food, the detainee said, “While in your facility in
Lagos, yes, but I decided that because of their hostility I won’t take any food
until I am allowed to talk to a lawyer. I continued to refuse food; until I was
allowed to speak with a lawyer, and I have seen my lawyer, but I am still being
denied access to my immediate family.”
Asked
if he had made calls to his family members, Sowore replied his interrogator,
“I’ve not made any calls to them. My brother is outside; he wasn’t allowed to
see me as we speak.
“No,
I’ve not made any call to my family members, I only made calls to people I
remember their numbers to bring me food and asked them to call my brother. My
brother came in today. But he was denied access to me, so I haven’t been able
to see him and as a result, speak with my mum, wife and kids.”(sic)
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