Amnesty Int’l Accuses Security Agencies & Boko Haram Of War Crimes

Amnesty International (AI), says both the Nigerian security agencies and the Boko Haram insurgents have committed war crimes in the troubled north-east.

The right’s group in a statement said more than 1,500 people had been killed in the first three months of 2014, and that the situation in the north-east region had escalated into a non-international armed conflict.

Amnesty said it had documented the killings carried out in January, February and March 2014 by both Boko Haram and the Nigerian security forces.

Part of the statement read: “AI has received credible evidence that as the military regained control, more than 600 people, mostly unarmed recaptured detainees, were extra-judicially executed in various locations across Maiduguri”.

The rights group has asked the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and the U.N. Human Rights Council to ensure prompt, independent investigations into acts that might constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Insurgents of the Boko Haram group have attacked several villages, government forces, churches, schools, markets and mosques in the north east since it started its operations in 2009.

The group increased the spate of attacks in February after a seeming military backslide in operations.

A governor of one of the north eastern states under emergency rule for almost 11 months had said that the Boko Haram group was better motivated and better equipped than the military, a statement the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan said was unfortunate.

The Military had insisted that it was capable of restoring peace in the region and had disputed accusations of extra-judicial killings of captured insurgents.

They had regained control of the region after President Jonathan gave a directive that they should comb the forests.

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