In the fourth of a series of articles looking at policing in Nigeria, the BBC's Andrew Walker asks what happened to the "Apo Six", the most infamous case of extra-judicial killing in Nigeria's history:
The pictures are truly gruesome - we cannot publish them.
Lawyer Amobi Nzelu spreads the glossy prints out on his desk, covering it with horror.
There is nowhere else to look except at the bodies.
There is a close-up of a face, gaping exit-wound at the temple.
Limbs and torsos covered in blood.
Dead eyes stare upward.
"This is a human being," he says.
"Look what they did."
Apology
The bodies belong to six young Nigerians killed by the police.
Ekene Isaac Mgbe, Ifeanyin Ozor, Chinedu Meniru, Paulinus Ogbonna and Anthony and Augustina Arebu were killed on 7 and 8 June, 2005.
 |   My friend was going to the bush, to go to the toilet, when he saw the police digging a hole and preparing to bury some people  Elvis Ozor Younger brother of Ifeanyin |
The police tried to say they were armed robbers who had opened fire first.
But a judicial panel of inquiry set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo rejected the police's story and the government apologised on behalf of the police for their killings.
The government paid $20,300 (£13,800) compensation to each of the families.
It recommended the officers be arrested and face a criminal trial.
But nearly four years since the night the Apo Six were killed, the trial has got nowhere.
The public has almost forgotten the case is still going on.
Danjuma Ibrahim, the senior police officer accused of ordering the killings, lives free on medical bail.
And the families of the dead have all but given up on justice.
Tight-knit
Elvis Ozor is the younger brother of Ifeanyin Ozor.
Like his brother, he works as a spare car parts merchant in the Apo mechanics' village, south of the capital, Abuja.
It is a kind of shanty-town of sea crates and workshops where five of the Apo Six worked.
|
This is a tight-knit community, mostly of ethnic Igbos from Nigeria's south-east.
On 8 June 2005 the Apo mechanics found the police burying their friends in a cemetery that, by chance, was near their workshops.
"My friend was going to the bush, to go to the toilet, when he saw the police digging a hole and preparing to bury some people," Elvis says.
"They recognised my brother. When the police said they were armed robbers, no-one believed them - they knew my brother was not like that."
"When I arrived at work, word had spread, but I didn't know. I arrived and everyone was looking at me," he says.
The story was out, and an angry mob gathered.
There was a riot in Apo and the police shot two more people dead.
Unlike any other case of suspected extra-judicial killing in Nigeria, some of the police broke ranks and turned on the senior officer involved.
The other five officers accused of the murders and eight more police witnesses have testified that Danjuma Ibrahim ordered the killings.
During the judicial panel hearings, some Igbo police officers fed information to Mr Nzelu, who represented the families of the Apo Six.
The panel heard that the six were at a nightclub in Abuja's Area 11 when Mr Ibrahim - then off duty - propositioned Augustina.
She turned him down, according to the testimony of Ifeanyin Ozor's friends.
%
Comments