area sentenced to death, were all of Atyap ethnic descent. On April 4, 1992, the trial of Major General Lekwot and that of his co-accused case began. They were charged with "unlawful assembly, rioting, rioting with arms, and disturbance of public peace". The chairman of the tribunal, Justice Okadigbo, reportedly showed open contempt towards the Chief G. O. K. Ajayi (SAN)-led defense counsel, with another team of the counsel, barrister Emmanuel Toro, expressing his belief that the tribunal was "hell-bent on convicting". On February 2, 1993, six of the seven accused were sentenced to death by the tribunal. These included: Maj. Gen. Zamani Lekwot (rtd), Maj. James Atomic Kude (rtd), Yunana Karau, Markus Maman, Yahaya Duniyo, and Julius T. Sarki (the village head of Zaman Dabo i.e. Atak Nfang). These decisions by the panel were not subject to appeal, except for a final endorsement by the National Defense Security Council (NDSC) whose made the final decision on the executions. As noted by Emmanuel Toro, "The ruling of the tribunal is still a mystery", being that the decisions of the later disbanded Okadigbo tribunal were never made public even to the attorneys of the individuals convicted and held in the Kaduna Prison, the Abeokuta Prison and the Port Harcourt Prison (as in the case of Major Gen. Lekwot). Five other accused persons in April 1993 remained in prison after being tried twice. Convicted by the Okadigbo tribunal of unlawful assembly, and by the Adegbite tribunal, they included: Adamu Shekari (the village head in the Zango-Kataf area)—sentenced to three years imprisonment and Peter T. Lekwot (brother of Maj. Gen. Zamani Lekwot)—sentenced to five years imprisonment. Despite their claims of innocence—Peter Lekwot had several witnesses testify that he was in Kaduna attending a meeting when the incident began, and Adamu Shekari who was also in another city at the time, their appeals were never listened to. The other three, namely: Zamani Kazah, Hon. Shekarau Kaah and Sani Adam Jankasa were all acquitted by the Okadigbo tribunal probably because they were all elderly men. (Zamani Kazah the local deputy chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), who was the oldest of them, was at least 80 years old at the time.) The Adegbite tribunal put these five on trial again with charges including culpable homicide. This tribunal later acquitted Adamu Shekari and Peter Lekwot on grounds they were absent from the crime scene at