ABUJA, Nigeria -- Shortly after midnight on June 8, Officer Danjuma Ibrahim fired an automatic rifle into a carload of six young people at a police checkpoint in this capital city, according to public testimony. The driver, Ifeanyi Ozor, 25, died instantly. His fiancee, Augustina Arebun, 22, bloodied but alive, let out a wail of anguish.
Over the next few hours, officers involved later testified, police drove Arebun and the other passengers to a remote location and executed them all. They planted guns and knives in the bullet-riddled car, posed the bodies around it for official pictures and announced that six dangerous armed robbers had been "killed in combat" with police.
In the past, according to Nigerian and international human rights groups, such crimes never would have been investigated or exposed. Each year, the groups report, hundreds of people die unlawfully at the hands of police officers, with no official acknowledgment or action.
But this time, because of a brief, desperate cell-phone call made by one victim shortly before he was killed, the truth began to emerge and public pressure mounted, ultimately cracking what human rights activists said had long been an impenetrable wall of official impunity.
The government convened an unprecedented commission of inquiry, where the police version of events completely unraveled. This month, Ibrahim, 44, and four other police officers are scheduled to go on trial on charges of culpable homicide.
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