UPDATED: Owo Catholic Church Terrorists Sentenced to Death by Hanging After Landmark DSS Prosecutio<\/p>\n
By Yemi Oyeyemi<\/strong>, Abuja<\/p>\n Justice finally caught up with the perpetrators of one of Nigeria’s deadliest attacks on a place of worship as the Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday sentenced four terrorists involved in the gruesome 2022 attack on St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State, to death by hanging.<\/p>\n The horrific attack, which sent shockwaves across the nation, claimed the lives of 43 worshippers and left 163 others injured during a Sunday Mass service.<\/p>\n Justice Emeka Nwite, delivering a landmark judgment, found four of the five accused persons guilty on all nine terrorism-related charges filed against them by the Department of State Services (DSS).<\/p>\n Those sentenced to death are Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza (25), Al Qasim Idris (20), Jamiu Abdulmalik (26), and Abdulhaleem Idris (25). The court ordered that they be hanged by the neck until certified dead.<\/p>\n The fifth defendant, Momoh Otuho Abubakar (47), was discharged and acquitted after the court found insufficient evidence linking him to the crimes.<\/p>\n The convicted terrorists were arraigned in 2025 following their arrest in parts of Kogi and Ondo States. They had pleaded not guilty, prompting the DSS to launch a full-scale prosecution after securing an accelerated hearing from the court.<\/p>\n During the trial, the DSS presented a compelling case built on the testimony of 11 witnesses, including survivors of the attack and security operatives who traced the suspects through call records and telecommunications data. Investigators also tendered 23 exhibits, among them confessional statements made by the accused in the presence of a Legal Aid Council lawyer, Mr. Daniel Hassan.<\/p>\n In his judgment, Justice Nwite held that the DSS had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n The court found that the four convicts joined the proscribed Al-Shabab terrorist network in 2021 through a recruiter identified as Odoba and subsequently attended a series of clandestine meetings in Kogi and Ondo States where plans for the Owo massacre were meticulously crafted.<\/p>\n According to the judgment, the final operational meeting before the attack was held near Owo, where the terrorists perfected plans for the deadly assault.<\/p>\n Justice Nwite further ruled that the evidence before the court conclusively established that the convicts detonated Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and opened fire on worshippers, killing 43 people instantly and inflicting severe injuries on scores of others.<\/p>\n Describing the evidence as “credible, cogent, compelling and unassailable,” the judge dismissed claims by the defendants that their confessional statements were obtained under duress.<\/p>\n “The signatures and thumbprints affixed to the statements belie their denials,” the court held.<\/p>\n Beyond the death sentences imposed on counts relating to the detonation of explosives that resulted in multiple deaths, the court also sentenced the convicts to life imprisonment on Count One and 20 years imprisonment each on Counts Two and Three.<\/p>\n The DSS prosecution was widely hailed as a major breakthrough in Nigeria’s fight against terrorism, coming more than four years after the brutal church attack that horrified the nation and drew international condemnation.<\/p>\n The Owo church massacre remains one of the darkest chapters in Nigeria’s recent history, with worshippers gunned down and bombed while attending a peaceful Sunday service at St. Francis Catholic Church.<\/p>\n For many families who lost loved ones on that tragic day, Wednesday’s judgment marked a significant step toward justice.<\/p>\n As the courtroom fell silent after the verdict, the four convicted terrorists stood condemned to face the ultimate penalty for a crime that left an indelible scar on the conscience of the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UPDATED: Owo Catholic Church Terrorists Sentenced to Death by Hanging After Landmark DSS Prosecutio By Yemi Oyeyemi, Abuja Justice finally caught up with the perpetrators of one of Nigeria’s deadliest attacks on a place of worship as the Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday sentenced four terrorists involved in the gruesome 2022 attack on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":97739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5807,7],"tags":[512,169,1302,4800],"class_list":["post-99183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-crime-and-violence","category-news","tag-death","tag-dss","tag-four","tag-owo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99184,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99183\/revisions\/99184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/97739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}