REUTERS reported on Sunday that it was in possession of an amateur
video showing Nigerian soldiers shooting unarmed captives in Maiduguri.
The
spokesman of the JTF, Sagir Musa, a Colonel, said he has seen the film.
He dismissed it as a propaganda by the terror group operating in the
region.
“We are professionally guided by a mandate and rules of
engagement in the conduct of our operations,” he said. “In our code of
conduct and standing instructions, no JTF personnel is allowed to carry
video or still camera and cell phones while on operations.”
The video contains clips Reuters’ claims it obtained from a soldier who witnessed the killings.
Reuters
explained that in the grainy footage, “a man sits down next to three or
four corpses piled together on the roadside. He pleads for his life
while soldiers shout at him and a crowd looks on a few metres away.
“Please don’t fire,” the man says in Pidgin English.
“He
tries to stand up and get onto the back of a pickup truck to the left. A
Nigerian soldier shouts “come out”, and drags him off it, shoving him
on the ground.
“One of them kicks him in the head. Then he and
another soldier aim assault rifles at him. Four gunshots are heard and
the man lies still next to the others.”
Reuters said it has
another video from the same source, taken after the executions, showing
soldiers piling up about 24 bodies in two heaps on the ground from the
back of a military truck.
Old images
The JTF spokesman
countered the video on two grounds. First, he argued that some of the
images in the footage were old images which were used to taunt the
military years back.
“Picture 1 was used as the cover page of the
Amnesty International report that was released on 8 November, 2012. The
Task Force is worried that the same picture is again being used by
Reuters News Agency that reported the picture was captured two weeks
ago,” Mr. Sagir said.
He said a second picture “Picture 2” had
earlier been used to taunt a Task Force which operated in the Middle
Belt sometimes in 2009.
“Picture 3 is about the vehicle allegedly
used by JTF to carry corpses. A look at the vehicle in the film revealed
that the JTF has no such vehicle in its inventory,” the Colonel said.
Secondly, Mr. Sagir said the video was staged by the terrorists.
“This film is stage managed and the allegation is baseless, terrorist oriented, spurious and bunkum,” he said.
There
have been several reports alleging extra judicial killings by the
military posted to the war torn zone to protect civilian. Early this
month, Amnesty International, released a report which detailed several
abuses by the military in their bid to fight the terrorist Boko Haram
sect.
The military always deny any allegation of misconduct in the
ongoing fight. Apparently choked by media bombardments with reports of
military excessiveness in the war against Boko Haram, the colonel warned
the media of ‘sanctions.’
“The Task Force wishes to once again
remind the public including the media that it does not condone or
encourage indiscipline and anyone found culpable will always be
appropriately sanctioned,” Mr. Sagir said.
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