NIGERIA: STATE-SPONSORED VIOLENCE

Vigilante groups in south-eastern Nigeria are responsible for serious human rights abuses which are tolerated, and sometimes actively supported and encouraged, by state government authorities. "The Bakassi Boys: the Legitimization of Murder and Torture," a joint report by Human Rights Watch and the Lagos-based Centre for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN), documents scores of extrajudicial executions and hundreds of cases of torture and arbitrary detentions by the "Bakassi Boys," a vigilante group set up in 1998 to combat armed robbery.