Footballers belonging to a banned Nigerian secessionist group have pleaded not guilty to treason for playing in a youth football tournament.
It was organised by the banned group Massob, which is campaigning for a separate eastern state of Biafra.
Biafran secessionist calls led to a three-year war in the 1960s in which more than one million people died.
The 53 men have been in custody for six months, the judgement will be made next month, the BBC's Sola Odunfa says.
Authorities say the men "had levied war on Nigeria" by appearing in the September championship in Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos.
Massob - Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra - was banned three years ago. It says it is pursuing its objectives for the Ibo people in eastern Nigerian peacefully.
Several Massob members have died in the last three years in clashes with the police in south-eastern Nigeria, where it draws the bulk of its support.
The government is intolerant of its existence because it revives memories of the horrors of the civil war against Biafra in 1967, our correspondent says.
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