!-4 ,i I. JUDGMENT: 1. This is the judgment ofthe Court read virtually in open court purs-uant to Article 8(1) of the Practice Directions on Electronic Case Management and Virtual Court Sessions, 2020. II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PARTIES: 2. The Applicants are Nigerians and as such, citizens ofthe Economic Community of west African states (ECowAS) and currently reside in Germany. J. The Respondent is the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a Member State of ECOWAS and a signatory to its Protocols and Conventions. III. INTRODACTION Subject matter of proceedings 4. The Applicants' case is anchored on the contention that their brother was taken into custody by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Abuja, Nigeria where he died shortly thereafter under unclear circumstances. They claimed that no effective investigatio, $u, conducted while his body remained in a mortuary for more than eighteen (18) months, and the authorities issued statemelts to the effect that their brother had been guilty of a d crime, although he had never even been charged with a criminal offence. 5. The Applicants contend that these facts reveal several breaches of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (hereinafter referred to as "African Charter"). They invoke in partioular the right to life, prohibition from torture, the presumption of innocence and the right to human dignity variously protected under Articles 4,5 andT(l) (b) of the African Charter. M a