War crimes: HURIWA faults Amnesty Int’l’s report

Amnesty had on Wednesday accused Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika, former Chief of Army Staff; Admiral Ola Sa’ad Ibrahim, Chief of Defence Staff; and Air Marshal Alex Badeh, current Chief of Defence Staff and six other senior commanders of causing the deaths of 8,000 persons in the cause of the war on terror in the North […]

Amnesty had on Wednesday accused Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika, former Chief of Army Staff; Admiral Ola Sa’ad Ibrahim, Chief of Defence Staff; and Air Marshal Alex Badeh, current Chief of Defence Staff and six other senior commanders of causing the deaths of 8,000 persons in the cause of the war on terror in the North East since 2011.
At a press briefing yesterday by Emmanuel Onwubiko and Zainab Yusuf, national coordinator and media affairs officials respectively, HURIWA said the conclusions in the report were “nebulous and fundamentally defective.”
The human rights organisation said that the findings fell short of the doctrine of superior/command responsibility, which rules out direct criminal liability for top level military commanders who had no knowledge of illegal actions of operatives on the field.
HURIWA also accused Amnesty International of indirectly harassing and intimidating the newly inaugurated President Muhammadu Buhari who recently gave directives to the military for frontal attacks on the armed insurgents.
While questioning the timing of the report, HURIWA also doubted the intentions of the London-based human rights watch, noting that the organization was releasing its report at a time the federal government stated its renewed resolve to crush the Boko Haram.