On Monday afternoon, The Nigerian Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Abuja indicted the Nigerian Army, the Directorate of State Security, DSS and the Attorney General of the Federation, saying they had “no credible evidence” to tag the 8 youngsters killed last September as agents of Boko Haram terror group.
The NHRC in an 83-page final report and decision indicting the federal security agencies, stated on September 20, that an army-DSS detachment stormed an uncompleted building in the Apo/Gudu district of the Federal Capital Territory on a presumed operation to flush out a Boko Haram sleeper cell.
The NHRC said that the claims remain unfounded and added that security forces apparently did not put their stories together well when they claimed at the time that over 100 inmates of Boko Haram fighters led by one Suleiman, also known as “R Kelly” were hiding and coordinating an attack on Abuja from the building, and had buried arms at the nearby Gudu cemetery.
After a 30 minutes military operation at the building, 7 of the inmates were killed, one later died in the hospital, 4 were arrested and later detained, while some of the inmates escaped during the operation and some of the arrested inmates were “expelled” never to return to Abuja.
The NHRC slammed the security agencies declaiming their argument that the victims were Boko Haram combatants. There is “no credible evidence” to reach such a conclusion and for that reason, the victims remain in the face of the law, “protected civilians” under the Geneva Convention act that governs the rule of law.
The NHRC further rebuked the security forces for being trigger happy, saying their testimonies of “self-defence were inconsistent and could not be accepted.
Security forces acted without proper amount of case in the prevention of death, said the NHRC, describing the killings as unlawful violations of right to life of the deceased.
Still on the question of proportionality of force, the NHRC said not only did security agents violate the right to life of the victims, even the survivors suffered non-lethal violations of right to life, physical integrity and livelihood.
The Army DSS and the Attorney General’s office were asked to pay 10million naira to each of the deceased family and 5million naira to the eleven injured youths.
Regarding the order to banish some of the youths in Abuja, the NHRC said the security forces had no legal backing to exclude or internally banish citizens.
The NHRC gave two months to the three agencies to review and harmonise rules of engagement governing the operations of security agencies and bring them into compliance with international standards governing armed conflict.