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NIGERIA: A MAN WHO CHEATED HANGMAN AT GALLOWS FREED AFTER 19 YEARS
October 24, 2014: following the release order signed by Ramalan Yero, the Governor of Kaduna State, a man who cheated the hangman at the gallows, was released from jail after 19 years on death row in Nigeria.
Thankgod Ebhos, 54, was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in 1995 and was dragged to the gallows and watched four fellow death-row inmates being hanged in June 2013. He was saved because prison officials realized that his sentence by a military tribunal called for him to be shot by a firing squad.
Human rights lawyers filed an appeal noting he had been convicted while the country was under a military dictatorship notorious for unfair trials and torturing confessions from prisoners.
A court of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in June ruled that Ebhos should be freed.
Ebhos is one of the nine prisoners whose release order was approved to commemorate Nigeria’s 54th Independence Day celebration. Nigeria had 1,039 people on death row last year. (Sources: Associated Press, 27/10/2014)
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