When mechanics Taye and Kehinde Hamza agreed to service a vehicle at their workshop in Nigeria’s Bauchi State in 2010, they could never have imagined the years of hell which would follow. The car, it turned out, belonged to a Boko Haram fighter, and the job was enough to get the twins arrested.
It would be another eight years until they were free again, cleared along with 473 others of terrorism charges.
At a previous mass trial, held in October, more than 400 suspects were released, with just 45 jailed for their roles in the Boko Haram insurgency which has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced millions of others.
Justice Minister Abubakar Malami told the BBC that the released suspects would be rehabilitated before being allowed to return to their families.
But while these judges are making headway into the backlog of people awaiting trial, there are still another 5,000 people are still waiting for their own dates to be set.
The judges have found 205 people guilty of terror-related offences – including the “master- mind” behind the abduction of the Chibok girls.
But while convictions like this offer the hope of justice for Boko Haram’s many victims, campaign group Amnesty International has questioned the method of the trial.
