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HRW: Children Imprisoned in Nigeria on Terror Charges Face Brutal Conditions

Chika Oduah

   ENUGU, NIGERIA - Musa, a 17-year-old living in northeastern Nigeria,
   has a grim story. He said when he was eight years old, members of the
   armed Islamic group Boko Haram attacked and burned down his village.
   Musa's family relocated, but two years later Boko Haram struck again.
   This time, the insurgents went off with Musa's family's livestock. To
   help the family, Musa began selling yams, but when he was 13 years old,
   Nigerian authorities arrested him and accused him of selling yams to
   Boko Haram.
   Musa said, "you can't tell who is Boko Haram and who isn't," so had no
   way of knowing to whom he was selling yams. He was held in prison for
   about a year.
   Musa told his story to Human Rights Watch when representatives of the
   organization recently came to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in
   the country's northeastern region; the city where Boko Haram got
   started in 2001.
   Musa is still bitter about what happened to him.
   "I'm very angry with the government because I didn't do anything
   wrong," Musa told HRW. "The government should dig deeply and
   investigate before detaining someone."
   Stories like Musa's were captured in a [1]report released this week by
   HRW, called "'They Didn't Know if I Was Alive or Dead': Military
   Detention of Children for Suspected Boko Haram Involvement in Northeast
   Nigeria."
   It documents how Nigerian authorities are detaining children, usually
   with little or no evidence of links to Boko Haram terrorists.
   Children as young as five years old were held without charge for months
   or years in degrading conditions inside overcrowded military detention
   facilities.

References

   1. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/10/nigeria-military-holding-children-boko-haram-suspects

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