… As Mexico arrests Zetas leader accused of migrant killings***
London-based non-governmental organisation, Amnesty International, AI, has said the eviction exercise by the Lagos State Government in waterfront communities claimed no fewer than 11 lives, with about 17 residents still missing.
AI added that the exercise carried out by the state government between November 2016 and April 2017, led to the displacement of over 30,000 residents of Otodo-Gbame in Lekki.
The organisation disclosed that about 300,000 residents of waterfront communities are under threat of further forced evictions in the state. AI claimed that the evictions were carried out in direct violation of court orders issued within the period, stressing that the residents were evicted while they showed Police a copy of the court order that was supposed to prevent government from demolishing their homes.
In the report entitled The Human Cost of a Megacity: Forced Evictions of the Urban Poor in Lagos, released by AI yesterday, it argued that the evictions of the Otodo-Gbame and Ilubirin communities were allegedly done without consultation, adequate notice, compensation or alternative houses offered to displaced residents.
During first eviction exercise, the organisation alleged that Police officers and unidentified armed men chased out residents with gunfire and tear-gas, setting homes on fire as bulldozers demolished them.
It noted that in panic, the residents left their property amid the chaos, adding that during their interview of 97 evicted residents, they claimed that some residents drowned in the nearby lagoon, while scampering for safety.
The organisation disclosed that no fewer than nine persons allegedly drowned during the first eviction and another 15 still remain unaccounted for. Of the 4,700 residents, who remained in Otodo-Gbame after the eviction, some slept in canoes or out in the open, covering themselves with plastic sheets when it rained.
Meanwhile, 823 residents of the nearby Ilubirin community were forcibly evicted within the same period of the Otodo-Gbame eviction embarked upon by the government. After being given just 12 days’ notice of eviction, AI claimed that Lagos State government officials and dozens of Police officers chased residents out of their homes, and demolished all the structures in the community using fire and wood cutting tools.
The report stated that the victims subsequently returned to the area and rebuilt their structures, but these were demolished six months later with just two days’ oral notice and no consultation.
In the meantime, Mexican police and military personnel on Tuesday arrested an “old school” Zetas cartel leader who allegedly coordinated a 2010 killing spree that included the massacre of 72 Central American migrants in the border state of Tamaulipas, authorities said.
The 56-year-old suspect was identified as Martiniano Jaramillo. Prosecutors said he was arrested at a hospital near the Tamaulipas state capital. A photo showed him in custody in a wheelchair.
He faces charges of organized crime and kidnapping, including the abduction of a U.S. citizen.
Authorities said Jaramillo was linked to the May 10 killing of activist Miriam Rodriguez, who spent years searching for her missing daughter and discovered her body.
In 2010, gunmen for the Zetas drug cartel killed 72 migrants in the Tamaulipas town of San Fernando. Investigators said the migrants were slain after they refused to work for the cartel.
The next year, 193 bodies were found buried in San Fernando, most of them migrants who had been kidnapped off buses and killed by the Zetas.
Vanguard with additional report from Fox