Following the October 4 and 5 orders for their release by Justices Awogboro Olawunmi, Tijjani Garba Ringim and Nicholas Oweibo, the military moved 101 detainees suspected to be linked to Bokoharam to its Deradicalisation programme in Gombe, northeast Nigeria.
The Judges dismissed the allegations brought against them and ordered their release. However, as soon as the High Court in Lagos ordered their release after being imprisoned for over a decade without charges except for an unproven association with Boko Haram, the Nigerian military stopped their journey home and moved them to the site of a deradicalisation.
Their release of the detainees from the maximum and medium-security facilities in Kirikiri Prison followed an intervention from the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria.
They secured rulings from three high court judges, and the agreement of the Attorney General of The Federation, that allowed the men to be freed.
But on October 8, the day after the third ruling by a Federal High Court, the men were removed from the prison and airlifted to Gombe. They will continue to be held under armed guard in a former orientation camp for National Youth Service Corps in Mallam Sidi, reinforced with walls and guard towers.
They will live in dormitories and spend their time attending religious classes and other “deradicalisation” programmes.
There release date is dependent on judgement of the camp administration. There is little information available about how these decisions are made.
The camp, codenamed “Safe Corridor” houses inmates, many of whom had nothing to do with Boko Haram. There is a section that often, contains detainees from Sulhu, a program run by the domestic intelligence agency for hard-core terrorists. The two groups occasionally interact.
As soon as the men were released, a story emerged on an internet news site that stated the men had been released in a deal for the remaining hostages taken from the Abuja- Kaduna train kidnapping. The release of the final group of abductees had been announced two days before, on October 5.
Dismissing the claim, the FCT Director of the Legal Aid Council, AbdulFattah Bakre said “This has been going on for long before the train business.”
The Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami signed off on the release in September.
It had been a long process to obtain the orders necessary to get the men freed. The legal aid body, an agency of the Nigerian government assisting people unable to get legal representation, filed a fundamental human rights enforcement application in May.
Many of the released persons were commuters profiled as terrorists due to their countenances. Research by human rights organisation Amnesty International indicates that thousands of people detained in Nigerian prisons have never seen a court or been charged. Without intervention, they could be jailed indefinitely after wrongful profiling and arrest by security forces. In 2015, Amnesty reported that in the course of security operations against Boko Haram, the Nigerian military arbitrarily arrested at least 20,000 people, mostly young men and boys.
