The Department of State Services (DSS) said the report of extra-judicial killings, torture of suspects to extract confessions and other vital information, against its operatives was untrue.

Reacting to the publication in an online medium, the DSS spokesperson, Dr Peter Afunanya, in a terse statement, said: “There is no iota of truth in the so-called exclusive. The DSS does not force out confessions from suspects and has not done so in the matter of IPOB and ESN.”

He further said: “the Service is a professional agency that follows the rules of engagement and standards operating procedures in all of its activities. It does not take laws into its hands. It is public knowledge that it has by today, charged many suspects to court in line with democratic norms. The entire reportage is a figment of the imagination of the news medium.”

Dr Afunanya stated further that the aim of the publication was to simply malign the Service and bring it to disrepute, adding that, ” by now, everyone should have been aware of the brand of guerilla journalism practised by this particular outfit.”

Recall that there were media reports with the caption, “Exclusive: Department of State Services’ Officer Samson Enweruzo Unveiled As Notorious For Forcing False Confession out of IPOB suspects, Involvement in illegal Raids, Arrests, Extra-Judicial Killings in the South-East”; alleging that Enweruzo, an operative of the DSS was behind most of what the extrajudicial killings of IPOB and ESN members in the South-Eastern part of Nigeria.

The report had claimed that a top source in the DSS has, however, identified Enweruzo as supporting extrajudicial killings in the South-East and notorious for forcing false confessions out of persons suspected to be members of the pro-Biafra group, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) or its militant wing, Eastern Security Network (ESN).

TodayNG