Human rights abuses still in Nigeria
The use of torture as a tool for extracting information in criminal investigation is fast declining globally.
Rather than engage in torture, investigators now deploy scientific means of reaching beyond the façade of preliminary information to unearthing the scathing elements of crimes that the suspects are unwilling to disgorge.
But torture is just one of the many rights abuses in Nigeria in the outgoing year.
The Constitution, in Section 34 (1), recognises the citizen’s right to dignity of person, a provision that forbids, among others, treatments that dehumanise individuals.
Other internationally accepted provisions exist in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICCPR of 1966, the United Nations Convention against Torture Inhuman and Degrading Treatment UNCAT of 1984 and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Specifically, Article 5 (2) of the ICCPR provides that "no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment or treatment. All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person."
Subsection 4 of Article 5 states that "accused persons shall, save in exceptional circumstances, be segregated from convicted persons, and shall be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as un-convicted persons."
Also Article 11 of the UNCAT provides that "each state party shall keep under systemic review interrogation rules, instructions, methods and practices as well as arrangements for the custody and treatment of persons subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment in any territory under its jurisdiction, with a view to prevent any cases of torture".
Incidentally, Nigeria ratified the ICCPR on July 1993, UNCAT on July 28, 2001 and has also domesticated the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights ACHPR under Cap 10 of Laws in Federation, 1990.
Expectedly, nations that ratify these conventions and treaties are, invariably, obligated to uphold acts and processes that discourage torture, inhuman treatment, among others.
According to Amnesty State of World’s Human Rights Report of 2010, the police allegedly continued to commit with impunity a wide range of human rights violations, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, and enforced disappearances. A group, the Access to Justice, AJ is of the view that such abuses remained in 2010.
It said several people were tortured to death in police detention while prisoners were held in appalling conditions, many of whom had been awaiting trial for years.
Violence against women remained endemic, and abuses against people suspected of same-sex relationships continued. Forced evictions affected thousands of people across the country.
Nigeria’s human rights situation was examined by the UN Universal Periodic Review UPR Working Group. Nigeria announced it accepted 30 of the 32 recommendations made by the UPR Working Group.
Nigeria acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance; the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.
According to AI, there have been numerous unlawful killings and enforced disappearances. Hundreds of people died at the hands of the police. Many were unlawfully killed before or during arrest in the street or at roadblocks, or subsequently in police detention. Others were tortured to death in police detention. A large proportion of these unlawful killings may have constituted extrajudicial executions. Many other people disappeared after arrest.
The families of such victims rarely receive redress and are often left with no answers. Most perpetrators remain unpunished. Although the police have mechanisms to receive complaints from the public, these complaints are often unprocessed.
The police frequently used torture and other ill-treatment when interrogating suspects and there has been no standardised mechanism to prevent such practices. Confessions extracted under torture continued to be used as evidence in court.
Despite repeated government pledges to address the problems in the criminal justice system, little progress was made. A review of the Police Act (1990) started in 2004 has still not resulted in new law. The vast majority of recommendations made in previous years by two presidential commissions, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, were not implemented.
Seven of 10 inmates in prison were pre-trial detainees. Many have been held for years awaiting trial in appalling conditions. Few could afford a lawyer and the government-funded Legal Aid Council has fewer than 100 lawyers for the country.
The Federal Ministry of Justice said it arranged lawyers to take up the cases of prisoners without legal representation. However, the impact of the scheme was not evident and prison overcrowding has not improved. The scheme did not address the causes of delays in the criminal justice system.
AI says violence against women remained pervasive, including domestic violence, rape and other forms of sexual violence by state officials and private individuals. The authorities consistently failed to exercise due diligence in preventing and addressing sexual violence by both state and non-state actors, leading to an entrenched culture of impunity.
While some states in Nigeria have adopted state legislation to protect women from discrimination and violence, the UN Women’s Convention is yet to be implemented at federal and state level almost 25 years after its ratification.
On freedom of expression, the Freedom of Information Bill has not been passed into law.
It is a practice among men of the Nigerian Police to use torture as the basic means of eliciting information during interrogation. The police find it impossible to apply scientific means of investigation owing mainly to two basic factors – the lack of necessary tools and poor quality of personnel.
The police in Nigeria, a country of about 150 million population, lacks functional forensic laboratory where scientific analysis of information is conducted. This deficiency also exists in the quality of its personnel who are mostly poorly-trained and largely illiterates.
This explains why men of the Nigeria Police see nothing wrong in relying solely on torture – either physical or psychological – as a means of investigation. This belief is evident in every police formation or facility.
While the police authorities take some measures to improve on the condition of offices and residential property inhabited by its personnel, same gesture is not extended to the various detention facilities and cells where suspects are detained for days or months pending investigation. While some are left in the conditions they were during the colonial era, others have been made worse as a result of the deliberate neglect by the management of the Nigeria Police
The current brute condition of these various custodial facilities, combined with allied practices of striping suspects, particularly male, before incarceration, detention in overcrowded, dingy and poorly ventilated cells are ways the police unleash psychological torture on inmates.
There are also practices like the denial of suspects access to lawyers prior to or at the point of writing statements, the parade of suspects before the media and the increasing cases of extra-judicial killing. Unfortunately, most victims are left without redress, a development that encourages these obscene practices among personnel of the nation’s security agencies.
Bothered by this development, the Access to Justice last week in Lagos, unveiled plans to confront these problems, using the instrumentality of the law through Public Interest Litigations PIL.
As an initial step, it has initiated court actions at the Federal High Court, both in Lagos and Abuja, against the Attorney-General of the Federation AGF, the Inspector-General of Police IGP and the police commissioners in the states and the Federal Capital Territory.
AJ’s Director of Programmes Leonard Dibia said his group adopted the court option having realised that "combating these investigative vices on a retail scale seems a clear impossibility; it is too systematic and too widespread to attack in every instance. Moreover, many victims of the abuses are too poor to challenge their ordeals."
He said the option of the PIL is a new strategy being adopted by his group to combat rights abuses in the country.
Dibia argued that the deplorable condition of the infrastructure in Police’s cells and detention facilities is encouraged deliberately by the management of the Nigeria Police as a means of oppression, repression, extortion and torture.
He said AJ hope to also challenge the practice of parading suspects and the denial of suspects access to counsel in future.
The suit before the Federal High Court, Lagos, intended as pilot effort, seeks to challenge, among others, the refusal of the management of the Nigeria Police to improve on the condition of its detention facilities in four police formations in Lagos, compel it to improve them and compensate victims .
They include the Special Anti Robbery Squad, Police Command Ikeja, Adeniji Adele Police Station, Ajeromi Police Station and Ogudu Police Station.
Parties in the suit are the Incorporated Trustees of Acees to Justice plaintiff and the Nigeria Police , the IGP, The Commissioner of Police, Lagos and the AGF as defendants.
The group said it derived its information about the treatment being meted out to detainees, the harsh structural conditions of the detention facilities and the degrading and dehumanizing sanitary conditions of the cells in the listed detention formations past detainees.
Some of the reliefs sought include a declaration that the detention conditions of the cells in the four detention facilities "are deplorable, brutal, inhuman and constitute a violation of the right to dignity of persons that have been detained, are being detained and would be detained in those stations contrary to Section 34(1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights."
Another is a declaration that the sanitary conditions in the said police stations "are harshly inhuman, brutally degrading, humiliatingly cruel and constitute a violation of the inmates’ right to dignity and right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment under sections 34(1) and 34(1) (a) of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Articles 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights."
The plaintiff also wants the court to declare that the failure of the respondents to provide for adequate feeding (or any feeding) access to free medical care of inmates and bedding facilities in the said custodial facilities "is inhuman, brutally degrading, humiliatingly cruel and is a violation of the inmates’ right to dignity and right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment."
It prays the court for an order closing down the aforementioned detention facilities and prohibiting the continuous use of the aforesaid police custodial facilities until an order is made by the court re-opening the facilities after the carrying out of renovations that make the facilities habitable.
AJ also seeks an order directing the respondents, severally or jointly, to rehabilitate, repair and renovate, within 6 months, from the date of the order made pursuant to this application, the custodial facilities of the aforementioned Police Stations to meet standards of human dignity as stipulated in the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Persons in Detention.
It is also seeking an order granting N1 billion to the applicants for and on behalf of families and relatives of deceased persons who died in police custody, either on account of corporal torture in the process of police interrogation, or on account of the inhuman and degrading custodial conditions of police cells.
The suit filed in Abuja is against all the Police Commissioners of the 36 state Police Commands and the FCT. It seeks in the main, a declaration that the practice where the Police engage in stripping suspects (mostly male) before detention as unconstitutional and an injunction prohibiting the practice.
The plaintiff is also seeking an order granting N1bilion as damages against the respondents jointly and severally, for payment to victims who have suffered the violation of their rights as a result of the practice requiring male suspects and detainees to remove their clothing’s before and during incarceration in Police cells.
In a supporting affidavit, the plaintiff averred that the respondents’ obligations arising from the treaties and conventions ratified by the country include the duty to ensure that police custodial facilities in Lagos State and indeed Nigeria are kept and maintained in humane and conducive conditions, and are fitted with the necessary facilities.
It added that the conditions of the cells in the aforementioned police stations constitute a blatant violation of the rights of the inmates past, present and prospective of those cells under section 34 of the Constitution, Article 5 of the ACHPR, Article 11 of the UNCAT and Articles 5(2) and 5(4) of the ICCPR.
The plaintiff cited a recent report of Amnesty International AI on the state of the World’s Human Rights, where it said "The police continued to commit with impunity a wide range of human rights violations, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill treatments and enforced disappearances…. Prisoners are held in appalling conditions, many of whom had been awaiting trial for years".
It averred that Nigeria is a member of the United Nations, having been admitted to the global body in 1960, and that by the terms of Principle 33 of the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of all Persons under Any Form of Detention, everyone detained or imprisoned has the right to request improvement in their treatment or to complain about their treatment, and the relevant authorities must respond promptly, and if the request or complaint is refused, it may be brought to a judicial or other authority.
While the applicant waits for the police response to the suit, Nigerians look forward to a new year with less police brutality.
The Inspector-General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, said in a recent interview: "The Nigeria Police like other similar organisations has always been the whipping boy of the society. We are always in the limelight, given our visibility in all nooks and crannies of the country.
"It is understandable that we are not a perfect outfit, but I doubt if there are perfect outfits elsewhere. While we have been criticised for some of our inadequacies, we have also received generous commendations for our efforts.
"I believe that as we daily improve on our skills and competencies, moderate our attitudes and deliver better services to Nigerians, the spate of criticism will abate. And we are working hard in this direction
"There are no rising cases of extra-judicial execution within the force. We are aware that some officers have got involved in professional misconduct, and they are paying dearly for it.
"Our job is to save life, and not to take it. Our ethics and code of conduct are clear that whoever misuses or abuses his power, or whoever uses force unjustifiably, will face severe sanctions. The Nigeria Police have never compromised on this. I want to assure you that I am here as the IG to serve the safety and security needs of Nigerians."
On next year’s election, he said: "The success of 2011 election is uppermost in the minds of almost all Nigerians and the international community, given Nigeria’s prominence in the comity of nations.
"The Nigeria Police identify with this concern and are determined to meet the yearnings and aspirations of the citizenry. We are well positioned to handle the challenges of the forth-coming elections, having regard to our previous successes in similar exercises in the recent past.
"As events unfold, we shall keep re-strategising, but I can assure you that our proactive approach will ensure that Nigerians are not disappointed.
The use of torture as a tool for extracting information in criminal investigation is fast declining globally.
Rather than engage in torture, investigators now deploy scientific means of reaching beyond the façade of preliminary information to unearthing the scathing elements of crimes that the suspects are unwilling to disgorge.
But torture is just one of the many rights abuses in Nigeria in the outgoing year.
The Constitution, in Section 34 (1), recognises the citizen’s right to dignity of person, a provision that forbids, among others, treatments that dehumanise individuals.
Other internationally accepted provisions exist in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICCPR of 1966, the United Nations Convention against Torture Inhuman and Degrading Treatment UNCAT of 1984 and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Specifically, Article 5 (2) of the ICCPR provides that "no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment or treatment. All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person."
Subsection 4 of Article 5 states that "accused persons shall, save in exceptional circumstances, be segregated from convicted persons, and shall be subject to separate treatment appropriate to their status as un-convicted persons."
Also Article 11 of the UNCAT provides that "each state party shall keep under systemic review interrogation rules, instructions, methods and practices as well as arrangements for the custody and treatment of persons subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment in any territory under its jurisdiction, with a view to prevent any cases of torture".
Incidentally, Nigeria ratified the ICCPR on July 1993, UNCAT on July 28, 2001 and has also domesticated the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights ACHPR under Cap 10 of Laws in Federation, 1990.
Expectedly, nations that ratify these conventions and treaties are, invariably, obligated to uphold acts and processes that discourage torture, inhuman treatment, among others.
According to Amnesty State of World’s Human Rights Report of 2010, the police allegedly continued to commit with impunity a wide range of human rights violations, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, and enforced disappearances. A group, the Access to Justice, AJ is of the view that such abuses remained in 2010.
It said several people were tortured to death in police detention while prisoners were held in appalling conditions, many of whom had been awaiting trial for years.
Violence against women remained endemic, and abuses against people suspected of same-sex relationships continued. Forced evictions affected thousands of people across the country.
Nigeria’s human rights situation was examined by the UN Universal Periodic Review UPR Working Group. Nigeria announced it accepted 30 of the 32 recommendations made by the UPR Working Group.
Nigeria acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance; the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.
According to AI, there have been numerous unlawful killings and enforced disappearances. Hundreds of people died at the hands of the police. Many were unlawfully killed before or during arrest in the street or at roadblocks, or subsequently in police detention. Others were tortured to death in police detention. A large proportion of these unlawful killings may have constituted extrajudicial executions. Many other people disappeared after arrest.
The families of such victims rarely receive redress and are often left with no answers. Most perpetrators remain unpunished. Although the police have mechanisms to receive complaints from the public, these complaints are often unprocessed.
The police frequently used torture and other ill-treatment when interrogating suspects and there has been no standardised mechanism to prevent such practices. Confessions extracted under torture continued to be used as evidence in court.
Despite repeated government pledges to address the problems in the criminal justice system, little progress was made. A review of the Police Act (1990) started in 2004 has still not resulted in new law. The vast majority of recommendations made in previous years by two presidential commissions, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, were not implemented.
Seven of 10 inmates in prison were pre-trial detainees. Many have been held for years awaiting trial in appalling conditions. Few could afford a lawyer and the government-funded Legal Aid Council has fewer than 100 lawyers for the country.
The Federal Ministry of Justice said it arranged lawyers to take up the cases of prisoners without legal representation. However, the impact of the scheme was not evident and prison overcrowding has not improved. The scheme did not address the causes of delays in the criminal justice system.
AI says violence against women remained pervasive, including domestic violence, rape and other forms of sexual violence by state officials and private individuals. The authorities consistently failed to exercise due diligence in preventing and addressing sexual violence by both state and non-state actors, leading to an entrenched culture of impunity.
While some states in Nigeria have adopted state legislation to protect women from discrimination and violence, the UN Women’s Convention is yet to be implemented at federal and state level almost 25 years after its ratification.
On freedom of expression, the Freedom of Information Bill has not been passed into law.
It is a practice among men of the Nigerian Police to use torture as the basic means of eliciting information during interrogation. The police find it impossible to apply scientific means of investigation owing mainly to two basic factors – the lack of necessary tools and poor quality of personnel.
The police in Nigeria, a country of about 150 million population, lacks functional forensic laboratory where scientific analysis of information is conducted. This deficiency also exists in the quality of its personnel who are mostly poorly-trained and largely illiterates.
This explains why men of the Nigeria Police see nothing wrong in relying solely on torture – either physical or psychological – as a means of investigation. This belief is evident in every police formation or facility.
While the police authorities take some measures to improve on the condition of offices and residential property inhabited by its personnel, same gesture is not extended to the various detention facilities and cells where suspects are detained for days or months pending investigation. While some are left in the conditions they were during the colonial era, others have been made worse as a result of the deliberate neglect by the management of the Nigeria Police
The current brute condition of these various custodial facilities, combined with allied practices of striping suspects, particularly male, before incarceration, detention in overcrowded, dingy and poorly ventilated cells are ways the police unleash psychological torture on inmates.
There are also practices like the denial of suspects access to lawyers prior to or at the point of writing statements, the parade of suspects before the media and the increasing cases of extra-judicial killing. Unfortunately, most victims are left without redress, a development that encourages these obscene practices among personnel of the nation’s security agencies.
Bothered by this development, the Access to Justice last week in Lagos, unveiled plans to confront these problems, using the instrumentality of the law through Public Interest Litigations PIL.
As an initial step, it has initiated court actions at the Federal High Court, both in Lagos and Abuja, against the Attorney-General of the Federation AGF, the Inspector-General of Police IGP and the police commissioners in the states and the Federal Capital Territory.
AJ’s Director of Programmes Leonard Dibia said his group adopted the court option having realised that "combating these investigative vices on a retail scale seems a clear impossibility; it is too systematic and too widespread to attack in every instance. Moreover, many victims of the abuses are too poor to challenge their ordeals."
He said the option of the PIL is a new strategy being adopted by his group to combat rights abuses in the country.
Dibia argued that the deplorable condition of the infrastructure in Police’s cells and detention facilities is encouraged deliberately by the management of the Nigeria Police as a means of oppression, repression, extortion and torture.
He said AJ hope to also challenge the practice of parading suspects and the denial of suspects access to counsel in future.
The suit before the Federal High Court, Lagos, intended as pilot effort, seeks to challenge, among others, the refusal of the management of the Nigeria Police to improve on the condition of its detention facilities in four police formations in Lagos, compel it to improve them and compensate victims .
They include the Special Anti Robbery Squad, Police Command Ikeja, Adeniji Adele Police Station, Ajeromi Police Station and Ogudu Police Station.
Parties in the suit are the Incorporated Trustees of Acees to Justice plaintiff and the Nigeria Police , the IGP, The Commissioner of Police, Lagos and the AGF as defendants.
The group said it derived its information about the treatment being meted out to detainees, the harsh structural conditions of the detention facilities and the degrading and dehumanizing sanitary conditions of the cells in the listed detention formations past detainees.
Some of the reliefs sought include a declaration that the detention conditions of the cells in the four detention facilities "are deplorable, brutal, inhuman and constitute a violation of the right to dignity of persons that have been detained, are being detained and would be detained in those stations contrary to Section 34(1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights."
Another is a declaration that the sanitary conditions in the said police stations "are harshly inhuman, brutally degrading, humiliatingly cruel and constitute a violation of the inmates’ right to dignity and right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment under sections 34(1) and 34(1) (a) of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Articles 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights."
The plaintiff also wants the court to declare that the failure of the respondents to provide for adequate feeding (or any feeding) access to free medical care of inmates and bedding facilities in the said custodial facilities "is inhuman, brutally degrading, humiliatingly cruel and is a violation of the inmates’ right to dignity and right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment."
It prays the court for an order closing down the aforementioned detention facilities and prohibiting the continuous use of the aforesaid police custodial facilities until an order is made by the court re-opening the facilities after the carrying out of renovations that make the facilities habitable.
AJ also seeks an order directing the respondents, severally or jointly, to rehabilitate, repair and renovate, within 6 months, from the date of the order made pursuant to this application, the custodial facilities of the aforementioned Police Stations to meet standards of human dignity as stipulated in the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Persons in Detention.
It is also seeking an order granting N1 billion to the applicants for and on behalf of families and relatives of deceased persons who died in police custody, either on account of corporal torture in the process of police interrogation, or on account of the inhuman and degrading custodial conditions of police cells.
The suit filed in Abuja is against all the Police Commissioners of the 36 state Police Commands and the FCT. It seeks in the main, a declaration that the practice where the Police engage in stripping suspects (mostly male) before detention as unconstitutional and an injunction prohibiting the practice.
The plaintiff is also seeking an order granting N1bilion as damages against the respondents jointly and severally, for payment to victims who have suffered the violation of their rights as a result of the practice requiring male suspects and detainees to remove their clothing’s before and during incarceration in Police cells.
In a supporting affidavit, the plaintiff averred that the respondents’ obligations arising from the treaties and conventions ratified by the country include the duty to ensure that police custodial facilities in Lagos State and indeed Nigeria are kept and maintained in humane and conducive conditions, and are fitted with the necessary facilities.
It added that the conditions of the cells in the aforementioned police stations constitute a blatant violation of the rights of the inmates past, present and prospective of those cells under section 34 of the Constitution, Article 5 of the ACHPR, Article 11 of the UNCAT and Articles 5(2) and 5(4) of the ICCPR.
The plaintiff cited a recent report of Amnesty International AI on the state of the World’s Human Rights, where it said "The police continued to commit with impunity a wide range of human rights violations, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill treatments and enforced disappearances…. Prisoners are held in appalling conditions, many of whom had been awaiting trial for years".
It averred that Nigeria is a member of the United Nations, having been admitted to the global body in 1960, and that by the terms of Principle 33 of the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of all Persons under Any Form of Detention, everyone detained or imprisoned has the right to request improvement in their treatment or to complain about their treatment, and the relevant authorities must respond promptly, and if the request or complaint is refused, it may be brought to a judicial or other authority.
While the applicant waits for the police response to the suit, Nigerians look forward to a new year with less police brutality.
The Inspector-General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, said in a recent interview: "The Nigeria Police like other similar organisations has always been the whipping boy of the society. We are always in the limelight, given our visibility in all nooks and crannies of the country.
"It is understandable that we are not a perfect outfit, but I doubt if there are perfect outfits elsewhere. While we have been criticised for some of our inadequacies, we have also received generous commendations for our efforts.
"I believe that as we daily improve on our skills and competencies, moderate our attitudes and deliver better services to Nigerians, the spate of criticism will abate. And we are working hard in this direction
"There are no rising cases of extra-judicial execution within the force. We are aware that some officers have got involved in professional misconduct, and they are paying dearly for it.
"Our job is to save life, and not to take it. Our ethics and code of conduct are clear that whoever misuses or abuses his power, or whoever uses force unjustifiably, will face severe sanctions. The Nigeria Police have never compromised on this. I want to assure you that I am here as the IG to serve the safety and security needs of Nigerians."
On next year’s election, he said: "The success of 2011 election is uppermost in the minds of almost all Nigerians and the international community, given Nigeria’s prominence in the comity of nations.
"The Nigeria Police identify with this concern and are determined to meet the yearnings and aspirations of the citizenry. We are well positioned to handle the challenges of the forth-coming elections, having regard to our previous successes in similar exercises in the recent past.
"As events unfold, we shall keep re-strategising, but I can assure you that our proactive approach will ensure that Nigerians are not disappointed.
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