Nigeria's army said on Wednesday it
had released 128 detainees held on suspicion of
being Boko Haram militants, two months after
nearly 200 others were freed after security
screening.
Human rights groups have repeatedly accused the
military of arbitrary detention of civilians in the
country's northeast, which has been wracked by
Islamist violence in the last six years.
Senior commanders have strongly rejected claims
of wrongful imprisonment, torture, ill-treatment
and even extra-judicial killings of prisoners.
A batch of 182 detainees was released in early July
and on Wednesday 128 more, 109 men, seven
women and 12 boys, were handed over to the
Borno state governor Kashim Shettima in
Maiduguri.
All had been arrested across the state as part of
counter-insurgency operations, said Nigeria's
highest-ranking army officer, Lieutenant General
Tukur Buratai, who was at the ceremony.
Also read: Boko Haram destroys public facilities in
Yobe
They were declared "clean" after screening from
military intelligence officers, the police and
members of the Department of State Security or
secret police, the chief of army staff added.
"This is (a) clear manifestation that the army is
clearly professional," Tukur said at the handover.
Amnesty International said in June there was
sufficient evidence for the International Criminal
Court to probe senior Nigerian officers for war
crimes because of the treatment of detainees.
At least 20,000 mostly young men and boys have
been arrested during the conflict while hundreds of
people were unlawfully killed and thousands more
died in military custody, the group alleged.
UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein echoed
Amnesty's concerns.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who has made
defeating Boko Haram a priority and vowed to
review military rules of engagement to try to end
concerns about rights violations, has promised to
probe the claims.
Last month he gave his new team of military three
months to defeat the Islamic State group-allied
rebels, whose insurgency has left at least 15,000
dead and displaced more than two million since
2009.
- AFP
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