A former detainee has joined the throng of women calling for the release of “innocent” men who were arrested in Maiduguri and other areas in the north by the military, State Security Service and police force.

Fannami Hassan, now a staff member of the Justice Empowerment & Initiative in Maiduguri, told RNI he had been arrested in 2012 by policemen when he was travelling to Gombe State to see his boss, Mohammed Imam, who later stood as the gubernatorial candidate for the People’s Democratic Party in the 2019 election in Borno State.

“I was arrested with a friend. They held us for a week. We were not allowed to talk to anyone. Then they took us to the Abuja Abattoir [a prison].”

He said he was in the Abattoir in 2014 when armed men, suspected of being members of the Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’way Wa’l-Jihād (JAS) – also known as Boko Haram − broke into the prison.

“I was there when they stormed the prison but I and some others chose not to run. We hoped the authorities would realise we were innocent and would do us justice, but they did not,” he said.

“My friends and I didn’t leave the Abattoir. We could have escaped if we wanted to but we chose not to run because we knew we were innocent. We were not the ‘terrorists’ the police claimed we were. We thought that, by staying in the prison, the police would realise we were not guilty and that we were telling the truth,” Hassan said.

But, he said, the police still believed they were “terrorists” and they were taken to the Gombe Police Command in Kahinji.

“Lawyers heard of our arrest and took the matter to court. But the police withdrew the case and transferred us to Abuja where we were again detained.”

When President Muhammadu Buhari came into power in 2015 he ordered that a mobile court be set up for the Kahinji detainees.

Hassan was released from prison in 2018.

He said only 240 of the 827 detainees that were taken to Kahinji were still there, adding that most of the men were innocent. “That is why I am calling on the federal government to release the men. They are innocent. They were arrested in their homes, not for doing anything criminal.”