ABUJA, Federal Republic of Nigeria. Nigerian military abuses have caused the deaths of some 8,000 civilians in the fight against Boko Haram extremists, Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday.
The London-based human rights group named senior officers it wanted tried for alleged war crimes and called on Nigeria’s newly-elected government, led by Muhammadu Buhari, to look into the abuses.
“The Nigerian military, including senior military commanders, must be investigated for participating in, sanctioning or failing to prevent the deaths of more than 8,000 people murdered, starved, suffocated, and tortured to death,” the report said.
If correct, those figures would exponentially increase the estimated toll from the nearly six-year-old Islamic uprising, put at about 13,000 dead.
Boko Haram has been fighting to impose Islamic Law across Nigeria’s north, massacring civilians and kidnapping thousands of women and children, but Amnesty alleges that the military also has committed atrocities.
The soldiers have detained more than 20,000 people — some boys as young as nine and often on scant evidence — and then held them in brutal conditions that resulted in many deaths, alleged the report.
“Former detainees and senior military sources described how detainees were regularly tortured to death — hung on poles over fires, tossed into deep pits or interrogated using electric batons,” said the report, entitled “Stars on their Shoulders, Blood on their Hands.”
The organisation called for the Nigerian government to promptly investigate five officers for war crimes: Major General John A.H. Ewansiha, Major General Obida T. Ethnan, Major General Ahmadu Mohammed, Brigadier General Austin O. Edokpayi and Brigadier General Rufus O. Bamigboye.
It also said the chiefs of defence and army staff, and their two predecessors, should be investigated for potential command responsibility.
Amnesty said it interviewed 412 people over several years for the report, including victims, relatives, witnesses and activists as well as military officials
Credit: Tribune (Nigeria)
