An Anambra High Court sitting in Onitsha, Anambra State, has asked the police to pay a lawyer in the state, Mr Ogbonnaya Obasi, the sum of N25m as damages for torture.
The court presided over by Justice Theophifine Oguji also ordered the police to tender an apology to the lawyer in a national daily.
The judgement which was delivered on Monday saw no fewer than 30 lawyers appearing for the applicant.
Obasi had instituted the matter against the police following his brutalisation by some police personnel attached to the Onitsha Area Command in October, 2019.
Obasi had on the fateful day interceded in the torture of a citizen, begging the police to stop beating the man, but the officers turned round and descended on the lawyer.
Delivering judgement on Monday, the court ordered the respondents to tender personal written apology to the lawyer as well as a public apology to be published in a daily newspaper.
The court also ordered the police to pay the lawyer “N25m damages, jointly and severally, for assaulting the applicant, and breach of the applicant’s fundamental rights”.
The respondents, Emeka Ebo, Yakubu Aboh, John Agbaka, the Inspector General of Police and Commissioner of Police were absent in court.
On April 13, Gul reported 17 coronavirus cases in Turkish prisons and said three of them had died of the disease.
There were no confirmed cases in closed prisons at the time, he said.
Turkey earlier this month started releasing around 90,000 inmates as part of a mass amnesty in a bit to reduce overcrowding and stop the spread of the epidemic in prisons.
The amnesty has been criticised for excluding opposition politicians, journalists, academics, civil servants and lawyers accused of terrorism-related charges.
The nationwide death toll from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, climbed by 95 to 2,900, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Monday.
The minister said that the number of positive cases rising to more than 112,000.
