‘Safe Corridor’ For Conscripted Terrorists Not Criminals

The coordinator of ‘Operation Safe Corridor’, Brig-Gen. Yusuf Ali, has clarified that the programme is not for hardened criminals but conscripted terrorists who have been profiled by Federal Ministry of Justice and considered as low risks to society.

Gen. Ali stated this yesterday when he responded to questions on the necessity or other while of the programme.

“Operation Safe Corridor” was established in 2016 to deradicalise, rehabilitate and reintegrate repentant terrorists.

Ali explained that the programme was established in response to the challenge of how to handle low-risk people who volunteered to surrender, “because there were very many at that time”.

He said, “These people were referred to as low-risk because of the circumstances in which they became members of the group. And what are those circumstances? We recall that at the time, places such as Gwoza, Madagali, Bama and all those populations were under the occupation of these criminals.”

He said that as kinetic operations were intensifying and they were being cleared from all those places, “they packed a lot of able-bodied men from those communities, conscripted them and forced them to join their group.”

Brig-Gen Ali added that some of them were captured while travelling from one place to the other, stressing that “they ambushed vehicles, carried innocent people, took them to the bush, forced them to fight for them, to work for them, fetch water and all those things for them.”

Ali reiterated that following intensified kinetic operations, the places were cleared and some of them seized the opportunity to surrender to troops.

He said “Operation Safe Corridor” has 17 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) supporting it and other international organisations.

“The Ministry of Justice is responsible for screening those who have surrendered, others who were arrested and in the process of screening, they differentiate between those who have no case to answer, victims also, like in those circumstances that I highlighted the other time.

“So, they classify those ones as low-risk and hand them over to ‘Operation Safe Corridor’, because the question is, why not just allow them to go straight back to society? That would be difficult, because they’ve already stayed in the bush,” he added.

He stated further that some of them have trauma issues and need psychosocial therapy. He added that NDLEA was part of the team to ensure that those who have drug issues were relieved from their drug addiction.