UN talks helped free Nigerian kids

LAGOS, NIGERIA— The United Nations has negotiated the release this year of 876 children detained at a Nigerian army barracks.

The children were being held as suspected collaborators of the Boko Haram Islamic extremist group, the UN Children’s Fund announced Friday.

The agency fears hundreds more children are still being held at the barracks in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, the UNICEF spokesperson for Nigeria, Doune Porter, told The Associated Press.

This is the first time the UN has reported negotiating the releases, though Nigeria’s army routinely reports how many minors are among the hundreds of detainees it frees after interrogations it says establish they have no links to Boko Haram.

Some of the 876 children released since December had been living in areas held by Boko Haram and were detained when those areas were liberated, according to Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s director for West and Central Africa.

Porter said many of the freed children were under 5 years old, some still being breastfed, and were detained because their parents were suspects. Nigeria’s military and police routinely lock up children along with parents suspected of a crime.

In the biggest single release negotiated by UNICEF, 560 people were freed in September.

Those detained have been held in Maiduguri, the city that is the birthplace of Boko Haram and the home of the Nigerian army’s Giwa Barracks. All of the detainees at the barracks are held because of suspected support for Boko Haram.

The Associated Press has documented the deaths of thousands of detainees in unsanitary, overcrowded and inhumane conditions at Giwa Barracks in recent years.