JOS CRISIS: PLSG OBJECTED TO TRIALS BY FG

JOS CRISIS: PLSG OBJECTED TO TRIALS BY FG

From our correspondent in Jos.

The Plateau state government has seriously objected to trials of suspects, arrested in the civil unrest in the state by the federal government in an Abuja High Court, which, according to it, was in contravention of the body of Attorneys-General meeting which agreed that such suspects should be tried where the offences was committee

Briefing the press in his office, the state Attorney-General and Commissioner of Justice, Edward Pwajok, said the government has consistently appealed to the federal authorities to return suspects arrested in the wake of the 2008 and 2010 civil crises in the state was becoming frustrating, because these request always falls on deaf ears.

He said the state is now handicapped over the fate of suspects arrested within the state in the heat of the crises, saying, the police, Army, State service, SSS, and others whose duties are to keep the suspects in their custody, have refused to cooperate with the state which is ready at anytime to ensure the prosecution of the suspects.

According to him, “no suspect of the November 2008 or January 2010 is in the custody of the Plat eau state government. The Police and security agencies that arrested them are federal government agencies”

“I am also worried that the police have wittingly or unwittingly contradicted and undermined the efforts of the federal government to delist Nigeria from the American terrorist watch list. The suspects are being charged under section 15 of the EFCC Act, which is on terrorism”, he added.
He queried that since the federal government was trying the suspects fro terrorism under the Nigeria’s laws, how then can the country justify it self to the outside world that it has no terrorist.

The commissioner stressed that he was “worried that the hon. Attorney General of the Federation may have encouraged the police to use the EFCC Act because he briefed us on that possibility during the meeting (Body of Attorneys-general) of the 26th January 2010 to that effect”

He further asked that are some “persons in the federal government so desperate to avoid due process by trying the suspects in Plateau state that they are willing to take a route that will give the international Community the irrefutable proof we are a terrorist country?

In that vein, he warned that without cooperation and collaboration between the federal and state governments on issues relating to these, then the problems are far from being addressed, even as he emphasized that “the characteristic silence of the office of the Inspector general of Police and the Honorable Attorney-general of the federation in this regard will definitely in the circumstance not be golden”