[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

Police Affairs Minister Broderick Bozimo on Friday paid out cheques of three million naira (US $21,000) each to representatives of the families of five men and one woman killed by police in June 2005.

The police had claimed the six were armed robbers, killed while trading gunfire with police in the Apo district of the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Bozimo said a judicial inquiry launched by the government found “incontrovertible evidence” the victims were not armed robbers.

“Government therefore exonerates the six victims and apologises to their families and in fact all Nigerians,” he said.

The government’s pay-out could unleash a flood of compensation claims in Nigeria where, according to a July report by New York-based Human Rights Watch, security forces have operated with impunity for years carrying out torture, extortion and executions.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in August publicly acknowledged widespread extrajudicial killings of suspects and innocent citizens by the country's police and pledged a clean-up operation.

Families of the six youths killed in Apo say their loved ones had a brief argument with the police on their way home from a party and were later gunned down by the officers.

Seven police officers have been arrested and charged with murder, including Ibrahim Danjuma, the number-two police official in Abuja.

Prosecutors allege Danjuma personally ordered the killings and shot four of the victims.

Word of the shootings, which took place on the night of 7 June, provoked violent street protests in which a police station and several patrol cars were set alight.

Police commonly use charges of armed robbery as a pretext for detaining people and extorting money from them, according to a UN human rights expert who visited the country in July. Police were also guilty of excessive force, often resulting in death, the UN official said.

[ENDS]