Justice Ishaq Bello of the FCT High Court has sentenced to death two of the police officers accused of murdering six Igbo traders in Apo area of Abuja in 2005.
Justice Bello gave the ruling on Thursday, in which he also discharged three of the accused policemen.
The traders killed by the police were Ifeanyi Ozor, Chinedu Meniru, Isaac Ekene, Paulinus Ogbonna, Anthony Nwodike and Augustina Arebun.
The accused police officers are Danjuma Ibrahim, Othman Abdulsalami , Nicholas Zakaria, Ezekiel Acheneje, Baba Emmanuel and Sadiq Salami.
They were arraigned on a nine count charge of conspiracy and culpable homicide, which contravened the provisions of Sections 97 and 221 (a) of the Penal Code Law.
The defendants allegedly played different parts in the killing of the victims, aged between 21 years and 25 years, while they were returning from a night party on June 7, 2005 in Abuja.
Following their deaths and the subsequent public outcry, an official panel of inquiry was set up by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration to unravel the plot.
The report of the panel said the victims were at a nightclub located at Gimbiya Street, Area 11 in Abuja on the night of the incident.
The panel further said that a face-off had ensued between Ibrahim and the group when the female victim (Augustina) allegedly turned down Ibrahim’s love advances at the club.
The other five policemen accused of the killings and eight other police witnesses had testified that Ibrahim, the senior police officer among them, had allegedly ordered the killings.
However, the defendants, including Ibrahim, had pleaded not guilty to the allegations.
