The Police Command in Lagos State has summoned four policemen to explain their roles in the alleged extortion of N1 million from some members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

An X user, @YemieFash, shared the encounter on Thursday.

According to the post, the officers threatened the corps members before taking them to where they were “robbed.”

The netizen said alleged that failure of one of the corps members to submit a hard copy of his driver’s license sparked the extortion.

“Your officers today in Surulere extorted 1 million naira from 3 corps members. They were threatened with firearms, kidnapped, and taken to the KAFARU OLUWOLE TINUBU HOUSE AREA C POLICE COMMAND of the @LagosPoliceNG where they were robbed.

“Their offense was the absence of a physical copy of a driver’s license. This is evil!,” the post read.

Some videos were also shared alongside the post.

“What about your driver’s license?” one of the officers asked the driver in one of the clips.

The motorist replied: “I’m renewing it.”

The officer then demanded the renewal paperwork, which the driver could not provide in hard copy.

Following this, a man dressed in plain clothing was seen removing the vehicle’s number plate, sparking an argument.

Giving an update on Friday, Benjamin Hundeyin, spokesperson for the state command, said the officers had been summoned.

He added that their trial has begun.

“The men have been summoned and their trial has commenced. We urge the complainants to visit the Complaint Response Unit at the State Headquarters to testify at the ongoing trial,” Hundeyin wrote on X.

A high court in Kwara has convicted five to death over the Offa robbery.

In the judgment delivered on Thursday, Haleema Salman, presiding judge, sentenced Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibikunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salahudeen Azeez and Niyi Ogundiran to death.

The robbery, which took place on April 5, 2018, resulted in 33 fatalities. Among those killed were a pregnant women and 12 police officers.

The audacious bank heist in Offa, a rustic Kwara commercial hub, shook an entire nation and dominated public discourse for several months.

The convicts were found guilty of illegal possession of firearms, armed robbery, and culpable homicide.

The judge stated that the offences are punishable by death.

During the trial, Akinnibosun, who claimed to be the ring leader, narrated how late Michael Adikwu, a dismissed police officer, sold the robbery idea to him.

He added that he in turn recruited four other accomplices to carry out the robbery, adding that he owned the two vehicles used during the incident.

Akinnibosun told the court that he killed two people who were trying to escape — at the entrance of a police station.

In a video evidence presented in court, Abraham, Salawu and Ogundiran confessed to shooting nine persons in a bid to escape lynching from eyewitnesses and the public.

A Japanese court has acquitted an 88-year-old man who is the world’s longest-serving death row inmate after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.

Iwao Hakamada was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.

Hakamada’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas.

The case has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.

In 1966, the former professional boxer was working at a miso processing plant when the bodies of his employer, the man’s wife, and their two children were discovered in the aftermath of a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo.

All four victims had been fatally stabbed.

Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, starting the fire, and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

‘COERCED’ CONFESSION

Initially, Hakamada denied any involvement in the robbery and killings. However, he later confessed — a statement he later described as coerced following lengthy interrogations and beatings that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968, Hakamada was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to death.

Some bloodstained clothes found in a tank of miso shortly after the bodies were discovered were tendered in evidence during the decade-long trial. Those clothes were used to incriminate Hakamada.

For years, Hakamada’s lawyers argued that the DNA on the clothes found at the crime scene did not match his, suggesting that the clothes could belong to someone else.

They also raised concerns that the police may have tampered with evidence.

In 2014, Hiroaki Murayama, a judge, agreed, stating that “the clothes were not those of the defendant” and that continuing to detain Hakamada was unjust, given the strong possibility of his innocence.

Hakamada was released and granted a retrial.

MENTAL HEALTH AFFECTED

However, the retrial did not start until last year due to a lengthy legal process.

In a judgment delivered on Thursday, the court finally declared Hakamada innocent, ruling that prosecutors had fabricated key evidence.

Hakamada was absent during the court proceedings as decades of imprisonment, most of it in solitary confinement under the constant threat of execution, have severely impacted his mental health.

He has lived with Hideko, his 91-year-old sister, since his release in 2014.

Retrials for death row inmates are rare in Japan. Hakamada’s case is only the fifth of its kind since World War II.

Japan, along with the United States, is the only G7 country that still enforces capital punishment, with death row inmates receiving only a few hours notice before their execution.