A participant in the Nigerian Army’s Operation Safe Corridor deradicalisation programme, Muhammad Ali, has alleged that he was not a participant in any terrorist activity but rather an innocent man caught up in a military sweep that changed his life for over a decade.
Speaking in an interview from 3:03 with Arise TV, Ali said, “Some of us are victims of circumstance. I fell victim to circumstance. I was in my shop when a group of soldiers came and raided the whole place, and they took 27 of us. As I speak to you, it is only two of us that are surviving now, me and one of my friends. They cordoned the whole area and took away drivers, passengers, and shop owners. That is how we were taken into custody. I spent 13 years in custody.”
There has been widespread public outrage over the Nigerian Army’s decision to reintegrate former Boko Haram combatants back into society. The military has pushed back against the criticism, maintaining that not everyone caught up in the northeast conflict was a hardened extremist.
Officials have argued that a significant number of those held were low-risk individuals, ordinary people ensnared by the chaos of the conflict…Read_More…