Nigeria accused of abuses in Boko Haram fight

Nigeria is illegally holding hundreds of people suspected of
participating in violence perpetrated by the armed group Boko Haram
and is denying them access to lawyers, an international rights group
has said.
Amnesty International alleged in a report released on Thursday that
most of those imprisoned around the country are held without criminal
charges.
Some of the suspects in detention have been summarily executed by
security forces before facing trial, the London-based Amnesty said.
The group also said some of those detained told its researchers they
were shackled for days, forced to sit in their own excrement in
overcrowded cells while watching other prisoners get beaten and
coercedinto confessions.
Amnesty blamed both the Nigerian government and Boko Haram in the
report for likely committing crimes against humanity as the guerrilla
conflict engulfing the nation's Muslim north continues to kills
civilians.
"You cannot protect people by abusing human rights and you cannot
achieve security by creating insecurity," Salil Shetty,
secretary-general of the group, said at the launch of the report
inNigeria's capital, Abuja.
"There is a vicious cycle of violence currently taking place in
Nigeria," the report stated. "The Nigerian people are trapped in the
middle."
"We spoke to scores of family members of eyewitnesses, of victims
themselves. People who had been attacked by Boko Haram, but also
people whose loved ones had been killed by security forces.
Eyewitnesses whodescribed they were made to lie down next to someone
who was then shot while they were lying down on the ground by a member
of the security forces," Lucy Freeman, one of the authorsof the
report, told Al Jazeera.
Abuse denied
Security forces routinely deny committing abuses, though the country
has a long history of abuses and so-called extrajudicialkillings being
carried out by police officers and soldiers.
Colonel Mohammed Yerima, a Nigerian military spokesman, saidsoldiers
do hold prisoners, but only to do a "thorough job" investigating their
backgrounds.
He said some people had falsely reported neighbors as Boko Haram
members out of petty disputes.
"We don't torture people. We interrogate them and find out if they are
members of the Boko Haram," Yerima told The Associated Press. "We
don't have any concentration camp that theyare talking about. All we
have is offices where we work."
Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, a military spokesperson in Maiduguri,
also denied the allegations, but said that "lesser human rights
infractions and abuses by [Nigerian] troops that do not involve
killing are being addressed".
The Amnesty report comes as both Nigeria's government and Boko Haram
face increasing international condemnation. Violence blamed on Boko
Haram has killed more than 720 people this year, according to an
Associated Press count, making 2012 the deadliest year since the group
began its attacks in 2009.
A Human Rights Watch report in October also accused Nigerian security
forces and Boko Haram of likely committing crimes against humanity in
their fighting.
Detainees 'held in slaughterhouse'
The Amnesty report includes claims of killings, house burningsand
rapes carried out by security forces, allegations that have trailed
the government's response to Boko Haram for months. Amnesty estimates
that more than 200 suspected Boko Haram members are being held at a
barracks in Maiduguri, while more than 100 others are being held at a
police station in Abuja.
Dozens of others probably are being held at the headquarters ofthe
State Security Service, Nigeria's secret police, and otherselsewhere,
Amnesty said.
Those held largely do not know where they are detained, cannot contact
their families or speak to lawyers, in contravention of Nigerian law,
Amnesty said.
Many are shackled together for nearly the entire day, the report said.
Those held at the police station in Abuja are kept in a former
slaughterhouse where chains stillhang from the ceiling, the rights
group said.
"There were shots in the night. I was hearing the shot of guns butI
didn't know what they are doing," said one former detainee at the
police station quoted in the Amnesty report. "When [the police] were
collecting statements, some of us cannot speak English, and some of
the officers cannot speak our language, so those that have difficulty,
they have been beaten... Our lives were - we were not alive. We had no
food, no water and no bath."
Others told Amnesty that soldiersbeat at least one prisoner with an
electrical cable, while others were denied access to medicine and
care. In the report, Amnesty said it requested to see prisons, police
stations, military detentioncenters and holding cells of the Nigeria's
secret police, but did not get access to the facilities.
Those arrested by police in Nigeria routinely face years of
imprisonment before even being brought to court, due to the country's
overburdened judicial system. That has only been exacerbated by the
influx of new suspected Boko Haram members,many of whom remain held by
a military that does not hand themover to civilian authorities,
Amnesty said.
"The failure to prosecute Boko Haram suspects has meant that justice
is not being seen to be done, and confidence in the security forces to
address the crimes and human rights abuses committed by Boko Haram is
being eroded," the report reads.
PHOTO CAPTION
Men suspected to be members of the group Boko Haram sit blindfolded at
a barrack after a shootout between the group andthe military in
Nigeria's northern city of Kano March 20, 2012.
Source: Aljazeera.com