{"id":11411,"date":"2019-10-26T22:15:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-26T22:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/ng\/?p=5906"},"modified":"2019-10-26T22:15:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T22:15:40","slug":"lawlessness-nigeria-police-beat-humiliate-threatened-radio-journalist-kofi-bartels-with-sexual-assault-inside-cell-committee-to-protect-journalists-new-york-says-nigerian-authorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/lawlessness-nigeria-police-beat-humiliate-threatened-radio-journalist-kofi-bartels-with-sexual-assault-inside-cell-committee-to-protect-journalists-new-york-says-nigerian-authorities\/","title":{"rendered":"LAWLESSNESS! ‘Nigeria Police beat, humiliate, threatened radio journalist, KOFI BARTELS with sexual assault inside cell’-Committee to Protect Journalists, New York …Says ‘Nigerian authorities must investigate and hold accountable the police officers responsible for it’ * Eye witness account: ‘A group of five police officers punched and kicked Bartels, a reporter with the privately owned Nigeria Info radio station, beat him on the knees with pieces of wood, and arrested him for filming them’ * ‘Citing Bartels’ work covering the police in Rivers state, the policemen said that they would put the journalist in a prison cell with an inmate who would rape him’-CPJ BY RAYMOND ADIBE\/CRIME CORRESPONDENT, Rivers State"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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LAWLESSNESS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Nigeria\nPolice beat, humiliate, threatened radio journalist, KOFI BARTELS\nwith sexual assault inside cell’<\/strong>-Committee\nto Protect Journalists, New York <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…Says\n‘Nigerian\nauthorities must investigate and hold accountable the police officers\nresponsible for it’<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*\nEye witness account: ‘A group of <\/strong>five\npolice officers punched and kicked Bartels, a reporter with the\nprivately owned Nigeria Info radio station, beat him on the knees\nwith pieces of wood, and arrested him for filming them’<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*\n‘Citing\nBartels’ work covering the police in Rivers state, the policemen said\nthat they would put the journalist in a prison cell with an inmate\nwho would rape him’-CPJ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\nRAYMOND ADIBE\/CRIME CORRESPONDENT, Rivers State<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JOURNALISM\nIS A NOBLE CAREER. MOST NIGERIAN POLICE OFFICERS ARE EITHER NOT\nPROPERLY TRAINED IN THE POLICE ACADEMY OR NOT NOT FOLLOWING AFTER THE\nCODES\/ETHICS OF THEIR LAW ENFORCEMENT JOBS. KOFI BARTELS is a famous\nNigerian broadcast journalist in Rivers State, but was humiliated,\nrubbished just for doing his media job without fear or favor. <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New\nYork based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) took up this matter\nas it challenged Nigerian authorities to investigate and hold\naccountable the police officers responsible for allegedly assaulting\nand threatening journalist Kofi Bartels.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eye\nwitness account revealed that on June 5, a group of at least five\npolice officers punched and kicked Bartels, a reporter with the\nprivately owned Nigeria Info radio station, beat him on the knees\nwith pieces of wood, and arrested him for filming them. This was\nconfirmed by this journalist, who spoke with CPJ on the phone and\nposted about the attack on\nTwitter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\nthe police station, an officer told Bartels that the journalist had\n“been giving them problems for a long time,” citing\nBartels’ work covering the police in Rivers state, and said that they\nwould put the\njournalist in a prison cell with an inmate who would rape him,\nBartels told CPJ.\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nofficers did not charge Bartels with a crime, and released him at\nabout 2 p.m., after the intervention of their former commander, about\nfour hours after the incident began, Bartels said. Bartels told CPJ\nhe went to the hospital after he was released, where doctors examined\nhis bruised knees and recommended he receive x-rays of his neck and\nspine, which he is scheduled to undergo tomorrow.\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The\npolice officers involved in this horrific alleged assault against\nKofi Bartels must be swiftly brought to justice,” said Angela\nQuintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in Johannesburg. “The\ninitial assault of a reporter documenting police behavior, compounded\nby the brazen retaliation for past reporting, is a chilling example\nof a gravely consistent pattern of Nigerian security services’\nviolence against journalists.”\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bartels\nsaid the incident began when he was filming the officers, whom he\nidentified as members of Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad,\nbeating a boy outside Bartel’s home in Port Harcourt. The officers\nsaw him filming, beat him, and brought him to the robbery squad’s\nheadquarters where, after learning that Bartels had a history of\nreporting on the police, threatened him and beat him again with their\nhands and wooden sticks, he told CPJ.\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nnamdi\nOmoni, spokesperson for the Rivers state police, told CPJ over the\nphone today that five men from the Special Anti-Robbery Squad were\nunder investigation for the alleged attack against Bartels, but that\nthey denied wrongdoing. Omoni said that the police force’s internal\naccountability mechanism would try the officers, but that Bartels\ncould also pursue his case in a civilian court.\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rivers\nState Police Commissioner Usman A. Belel is aware of the situation\nand information from an investigation should be available after one\nweek, Omoni said.\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bartels’\nalleged assault came just days after Nigeria’s National Human Rights\nCommission presented President Muhammadu Buhari with a report on\nmethods to reform the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, according to news\nreports.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nreport resulted from “allegations of human rights violations\nperpetrated by officers and men of SARS,” Buhari said on\nTwitter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier\nthis year, journalists told CPJ\nthey\nwere harassed and detained by Nigerian security forces while covering\nthe country’s elections. Last year, Nigerian police detained a group\nof 10 journalists covering Buhari and assaulted two, CPJ reported at\nthe time.\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LAWLESSNESS! ‘Nigeria Police beat, humiliate, threatened radio journalist, KOFI BARTELS with sexual assault inside cell’-Committee to Protect Journalists, New York …Says ‘Nigerian authorities must investigate and hold accountable the police officers responsible for it’ * Eye witness account: ‘A group of five police officers punched and kicked Bartels, a reporter with the privately owned Nigeria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[129,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-11411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-media","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-nigeria-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}