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serious, even trivial, offences. Thomas Komati, who had been held in solitary confinement for almost six months, was eventually prosecuted for having scratched political slogans on the walls of his cell. Like all the SWAPO leaders who had been detained, Mr Komati alleged that he had been tortured at the hands of the South African police.
The situation in Namibia, and particularly in Ovamboland, remained tense throughout the year. The public flogging of SWAPO supporters by the South African appointed Ovambo chiefs, which had aroused a storm of international protest, was gradually suspended and finally forbidden by a ruling of the Appellate Division of the South African Supreme Court in February 1975. AI's Campaign for the Abolition of Torture published a selection of affidavits written by some of the victims of the floggings in mid-1974, and in August 1974, AI sub- mitted a communication to UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim "concerning a consistent pattern of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights perpetrated by the government of South Africa upon inhabitants of Namibia". However, one factor which also influenced the decline of public flogging in Ovamboland was the mass exodus of SWAPO supporters which occurred in the last months of 1974: an estimated 3,000 people left Namibia and sought refuge in Zambia.
Niger
In April 1974 the government of President Hamani Diori was overthrown by a military coup, just as Amnesty International was preparing to take up the cases of teachers, students and secondary school pupils who had been imprisoned for political offences in December 1973. Although the coup released political prisoners, President Diori and members and supporters of his Parti Progressiste Nigerien (PPN) were detained. In a letter to the new President of Niger, Colonel Seyni Kountché, in December 1974, AI Secretary General Martin Ennals expressed the organization's concern at the continuing restriction of ex-President Hamani Diori and others.
Nigeria
During the first half of 1974, Amnesty International groups continued to work on the investigation cases of 13 former members of the Biafran armed forces who had been detained without trial since the end of the Nigerian Civil War in January 1970. Groups were asked to appeal for a general amnesty on 1 October 1974, Nigeria's Independence Day.
In a speech that day, the Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, announced that all military detainees would be released. Since that time the Research Department has heard of the release of a number of the investigation case prisoners, although it is believed that the promised amnesty has yet to be implemented fully.
In the speech which announced the impending release of the military detainees, General Gowon retracted a former pledge that his military regime would give way to a civilian government by 1976. This provoked unrest in some political and academic circles in Nigeria, and several critics of the policies of the Federal Military Government were detained without trial under the provisions of the 1967