Nigeria - mass arrests

Nigerian police raid religious group in Niger state, detain hundreds

Article published on the 2009-08-16 Latest update 2009-08-16 16:13 TU

Women evacuated from the Darul Islam camp, 15 August 2009
(Photo: Reuters)

Police in the western Nigerian state of Niger detained hundreds of men from an Islamic community Saturday as part of a crackdown on radical Islamic groups, three weeks after an uprising of the Boko Haram religious group in the northeast killed almost 800 people. Some 1,000 police officers from the capital, Abuja, surrounded the compound of the Darul Islam community and took everyone in for questioning.

Correspondent Ben Shemang says the group is accused by neighbouring communities of “wife-swapping, restricting movement of members and abducting people into the Darul Islam community.”

He said everyone in the compound was evacuated to a nearby school to be questioned by police and immigration officers. Some are thought to be from neighbouring countries Niger and Chad.

The leaders of the group have been taken to Abuja.

“We are monitoring their activities,” Nigerian police spokesperson, Emmanuel Ojukwu, told RFI.

“People have a right to express their religious opinions, so long as they aren’t in conflict with the law,” he added, saying that police are looking into the group’s activities and making sure they are in line with Nigerian law.

No weapons were found in the raid, and no one resisted arrest.

The leader of the Darul Islam (House of Islam) group, Amrul Bashir Abdullahi, who was detained, said he is not against Western education, like Boko Haram.

"We are not against Western education as we are being accused, but we have our own belief which is not in any way an infringement of the state authorities," he said.

Abdullahi founded the community in the early 1990s to get away the social ills of "corruption, drunkenness and prostitution.”