Nigerian Soldiers in Torture Video

The Nigerian Army (NA) has said it is “unambiguous about human rights and extra judicial actions”, after a video emerged of soldiers torturing and killing a suspected member of Boko Haram.

In a statement released yesterday, Acting Director of Army Public Relations, Sagir Musa, said “NA does not license, encourage or condone indiscipline, unprofessional conduct, especially [the] extra judicial execution of suspects or combatants.

“Wherever such is noticed or reported, once it is confirmed, appropriate decisive sanction or punishment is usually immediately meted out to the perpetrators and this case would be no exception”.

The identity of those in the video is yet to be confirmed, nor is it clear when the video was taken, but it is thought to have been filmed in the north-east of the country, where the NA has been fighting the insurgent Boko Haram for years.

However, this is a rare admission from the NA that such atrocities do occur.

More often than not when allegations of this nature emerge, the NA denies all human rights abuses, shaming the validity of the claims.

Last month Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari said Boko Haram had been “technically” defeated in the country, though evidence would suggest this claim baseless.

The government has been fighting the terror group since its inception in 2002, but the violence intensified after it launched an uprising against the government in 2009 following the death of its leader in captivity.