Kazakh police officers illegally imprisoned citizens of Nigeria

Nigerian citizens Ebode Clement Ireuesiri and Peter Tochukwu intend to force Kazakh police to pay them compensation in the amount of $50 000 for having illegally spent two years in Kazakh prison.

In 2017, Ireuesiri and Tochukwu arrived in Kazakhstan in search of work. In Karaganda, they met a Turkish citizen who owns a textile store. As the Turkish citizen later told the police, the Nigerians, who introduced themselves as John and Smith, proposed a joint business. When he called them to his home to discuss cooperation, they allegedly rinsed him with some pills and stole $30 000 from his closet, instead of them placing a so-called “doll” (stacks of office paper which was cut into pieces).

Having discovered the substitution, the Turkish citizen turned to the police. In January 2018, Ireuesiri and Tochukwu were detained in Pavlodar. By the decision of the judge of Kazybekbi district court of Karaganda, Argyn Kutyshev, they were sentenced to 5 years in prison for theft. However, the citizens of Nigeria didn’t agree with the verdict and appealed to the court of appeal. The Karaganda Regional Court began consideration of this case in January 2019 and considered it until April.

It was in the appellate court that very curious details were surfaced of how the police of Karaganda investigated the case of embezzlement of the Turkish citizen, and how they interrogated Ireuesiri and Tochukwu. It turned out that to communicate with the suspects during interrogations and confrontations, the police resorted to the help of the daughter of the chief of the duty unit. And for the translation of written materials, they used Google translator!

As a result of the proceedings, the appellate court concluded that the rights of the Nigerians were severely violated because they didn’t understand what the police were talking about. By court decision, they were acquitted.

“We don’t know the language and the system of your country. Every day spent in prison, I will remember all my life,” Clement Ireuesiri said after the trial. “We couldn’t explain anything, no one understood us, neither in the police, nor in the court. My friend and I had problems with my heart and nervous system. We were finally lucky with the defender. We claim compensation in the amount of $50 000 from the police officers, who conducted the investigation, for everything that we had experienced during that time.”