false information about his return, and have on several occasions surrounded his house, searched it, and subsequently searched for him in his mother’s village. 85. In the early part of 1993, the UNHCR in Cote d’lvoire informed the Complainant that they had received a report on him from Ghana assuring that he was free to return without risk of being prosecuted for fleeing from prison. The report further stated that all those detained for political reasons had been released. [The] Complainant on the other hand maintained that there is a law in Ghana which subjects escapees to penalties from 6 months to 2 years imprisonment, regardless of whether the detention from which they escaped was lawful or not. On the basis of the above, the Commission held that “considering the nature of the complaint it would not be logical to ask the Complainant to go back to Ghana in order to seek a remedy from national legal authorities. Accordingly, the Commission does not consider that local remedies are available for the Complainant”. 9 86. In Rights International , the victim, a certain Mr Charles Baridorn Wiwa, a Nigerian student in Chicago was arrested and tortured at a Nigerian Military Detention Camp in Gokana. It was alleged rd that Mr Wiwa was arrested on 3 January 1996 by unknown armed soldiers in the presence of his rd mother and other members of his family and remained in the said Military detention camp from 3 to th 9 January 1996. While in detention, Mr Wiwa was horsewhipped and placed in a cell with forty-five other detainees. When he was identified as a relative of Mr Ken Saro Wiwa he was subjected to various forms at torture. Enclosed in the communication was medical evidence of Mr Wiwa’s physical torture. After 5 days in the detention camp in Gokana, Mr Wiwa was transferred to the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB) in Port Harcourt. Mr Wiwa was held from 9-11 January 1996, without access to a legal counsel or relatives, except for a five minutes discussion with his grandfather. On th 11 January 1996, Mr Wiwa and 21 other Ogonis were brought before the Magistrate Court 2 in PortHarcourt, charged with unlawful assembly in violation of Section 70 of the Criminal Code Laws of Eastern Nigeria 1963. Mr Wiwa was granted bail, but while out on bail some un-known people believed to be government agents abducted him and threatened his life by forcing him into a car in th Port-Harcourt. On the advice of human rights lawyers, Mr Wiwa fled Nigeria on 18 March 1996 to Cotonou Republic of Benin, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees declared him a refugee. th On September 17 1996, the US government granted him refugee status and he has been residing in the United States since then. 87. In this case, the African Commission declared the communication admissible on grounds that there was lack of available and effective domestic remedies for human rights violations in Nigeria under the military regime. It went further to assert that“the standard for constructive exhaustion of domestic remedies is satisfied where there is no adequate or effective remedy available to the individual. In this particular case, Mr Wiwa was unable to pursue any domestic remedy following his flight for fear of his life to the Republic of Benin and the subsequent granting of refugee status to him by the United States of America”. 88. The present communication brought by Mr Michael Majuru should also be differentiated 10 from Gabriel Shumba v Republic of Zimbabwe . In the Shumba case, the Complainant alleged that, he, in the presence of 3 others, namely Bishop Shumba, Taurai Magayi and Charles Mutama was taking instructions from one of his clients, a Mr John Sikhala, in a matter involving alleged political harassment by members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). Mr John Sikhala is a Member of Parliament from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is an opposition party in Zimbabwe. At about 11:00 pm riot police accompanied by plain-clothes policemen and personnel identified to be from the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) stormed the room and arrested everyone present. During the arrest, the Complainant’s law practising certificate, diary, files, documents and cell phone were confiscated and he was slapped and kicked several times by, among others, the Officer in Charge of Saint Mary’s Police Station. 89. The Complainant and the others were taken to Saint Mary’s Police Station where he was detained without charge and denied access to legal representation. He was also denied food and water. The Complainant claimed that on the next day following his arrest he was removed from the cell, a hood was placed over his head and he was driven to an unknown location where he was led down what seemed like a tunnel to a room underground. The hood was removed, he was stripped naked and his hands and feet were bound in a foetal position and a plank was thrust between his legs