RIVERS: POLICE INSPECTOR, 2 OTHER IN SOUP OVER ATTACK ON JOURNALIST

A POLICE Inspector in Rivers State, and two other armed security personnel have landed in the soup for attacking and dehumanising the state correspondent of The Punch, Ibanga Isine, at the D-Line area of Port Harcourt, the state capital, on Monday night.

Spokesperson for the police in the state, Mrs. Rita Inoma-Abbey, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), who made this known to our correpondent yesterday said the state Police Commissioner, Bala Hassan, ordered for the arrest of the police men who were involved in the attack on The Punch staff.

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Already, Hassan has directed that a query be issued to the police inspector whose name was not disclosed by the command for ''dereliction of duty'' while the others are to face orderly room trial.

The state Information Commissioner, Mr. Ogbonna Nwuke, and the Spokesman for the Joint Task Force (JTF), a special security outfit saddled with the task of containing insurgents in the state code-named Operation Flush 3, Lt.-Colonel Sagir Musa, who visited the scene of the incident on Monday night following a distress call from the journalist, have decried the human rights abuse on Isine by the security agents and publicly apologised for the officers misconduct.

Isine, told our correspondent on telephone yesterday from a private clinic where he was receiving treatment that he was on his way home after taking his dinner from a nearby restaurant when the police men on duty around NITEL facilities charged at him.

''They beating and arresting innocent persons who were on their way home. They did not even ask me to identify myself when they started hitting me with the boot of their riffle and also use their horse whip on me. I opted to call either the police commissioner or the police public relations officer. They refused, threatening that if i bring out mu phone, they will smash it'', The Punch correspondent said.

Continuing, he added, ''as they were making mincemeat on me, i did not know when i fell down, shouting aloud 'i am a journalist o'. Most people who saw the terror being unleashed on citizens by our security agent fled the scene in a desperate bid to avoid being victims. When they left me, i put a call across to both the information commissioner and the JTF spokesman who arrived 30 minutes after i was battered. The two gentle men denounced the action of the security agents''.