Ahmed Imam’s crime seemed despicable and clear enough one recent afternoon. In violation of what seems an unwritten code in his troubled city, he attempted what appeared unacceptable: running a shop too close to the scene of a deadly bomb blast.

Such an infraction should possibly bestow on him a dutiful right to knowing the perpetrators of the act, or personally bearing the culpability-as the security forces fighting Islamist insurgency, launched by the Boko Haram sect, seemed to believe.

So as the dead and the wounded were evacuated from the bloody spot in what has become Nigeria’s hotbed of religious militancy, armed soldiers rounded up dozens of men within the vicinity of the attack in Maiduguri, and herded them into vans that later delivered them to a cell.

“Over 50 of us were arrested and we were bundled into the military vehicle the same way people transport firewood from the bush to the city centre,” Mr. Imam, who asked that his real names not be revealed for his safety, said recently.

At the facility, named Giwa Barracks-a vast unit with multiple cells- the men were handcuffed from the rear around a pillar, and their bodies stretched intermittently while they were flogged.

Some only left months later after paying huge “bail” sums.

The treatment

The detention, and the punishment, which human rights groups have branded “torture,” and have urged their immediate end, has redefined the federal government’s military operations against the sect which burrows itself within the civilian population, from where it delivers devastating blows, providing a platform for the Joint Task Force to get back at the perpetrators, and often times, the innocents..Read more: http://premiumtimesng.com/news/114950-how-nigeria-military-arrest-torture-exploit-innocents-at-giwagiwa-barracks.html