Nigeria courts convict 125 Boko Haram Islamist ins...

Nigeria courts convict 125 Boko Haram Islamist insurgents in mass trial

Reuters- Nigerian courts convicted 125 Boko Haram Islamist militants and financiers of a series of terrorism-related offences in a mass trial this week, the attorney-general's office said.

The Federal High Court handed down the conviction in a mass trial held at the military detention facility in Kanji, Niger State.

Thousands of people have been killed as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency with millions displaced since it began in 2009, creating a humanitarian crisis in north-eastern Nigeria.

Attorney-General's office spokesperson, Kamarudeen Ogundele on Friday that said, "they were convicted of charges bordering on terrorism, terrorism financing, rendering material support, and cases relating to International Criminal Courts criminality".

The last mass trials of Boko Haram suspects took place between 2017 and 2018, where 163 people were convicted and 887 set free.

Ogundele added that from the previous convictions, 400 defendants who had completed their sentences were moved to a rehabilitation centre known as Operation Safe Corridor in Gombe State, northeast Nigeria "for rehabilitation, deradicalisation and subsequent reintegration".

Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 girls from a school in the north-eastern town of Chibok in April 2014, an attack that sparked outrage and gave rise to the global "#Bring Back Our Girls" campaign, though more than half of the girls have returned, many as mothers of multiple children.

The breakdown of the latest convictions showed that 85 people were convicted for terrorism financing, 22 for ICC related crimes, while the rest were convicted for terrorism.