Nigeria: People detained by military disappear in northeast

Police have detained members of the civilian self-defense group, who said they took the suspected insurgents to the military barracks for detention, but were turned away and then a separate group of soldiers seized and killed the brothers, Deputy Superintendent Othman Abubakar said.

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari promised to end military abuses last year, pledging an investigation into Amnesty International's allegations that since 2011, the military has been responsible for the deaths of some 8,000 detainees who were shot, starved or tortured.

Human rights groups also accuse the self-defense fighters of extrajudicial killings but no one has collated figures.

[...] it said it has established a special court martial to try "all cases of indiscipline and related acts of misconduct, including human rights abuse."

Buhari told a delegation from the United States Institute of Peace this week that "mechanisms" have been put in place to ensure human rights are respected in the fight against terrorism.

There's little evidence of this in the villages, and one of nine senior commanders that Amnesty International accused of possible war crimes — Maj. Gen. Ahmadu Mohammed — was reinstated last month without any investigation, ending an early retirement prompted by a mutiny among his men.

Poisoning the atmosphere in camps and villages, insurgents and suicide bombers have quietly joined the thousands of people freed by Nigerian troops.

In an indication of how many people are wrongly accused, Nigeria's army last week freed 267 detainees including dozens of children, some preschoolers, saying investigators had determined they had no links to Boko Haram.

The many allegations of gross rights abuses have hampered the cooperation some allies including the United States can offer to Nigeria because of laws that prohibit arming and training troops that may be guilty of war crimes.