Metro
1 week after Army released 760 Boko Haram suspects, court frees 468 more
About one week after the Nigerian Army announced that it had cleared and released 760 Boko Haram suspects for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, a Federal High Court sitting in Kainji, Niger State, has freed 468 more suspects, while also sentencing 45 members of the sect to between 3 and 31 years in jail.
Those jailed were among the 575 Boko Haram suspects arraigned in the first phase of the announced mass trial of the suspects.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, stated that the Kainji court also struck out 34 cases while 28 suspects were remanded for trial in Abuja and Minna.
Read also: We’ve ‘cleared’, released 760 Boko Haram suspects for ‘reintegration into society’- Army
In its ruling, the court ordered that the 468 discharged persons be made to undergo de-radicalization and rehabilitation programmes before being handed over to their respective state governments.
The trial had commenced with the formal remand by the court of 1,669 suspects for a period of 90 days, with the Court ordering that they be arraigned within the specified period or released unconditionally.
Following the conclusion of the day’s proceedings, the court adjourned the trial of other suspects to January 2018.
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