NIAMEY — More than 40 former Islamist extremists have completed
a deradicalization and professional training course in southeast
Niger, local
authorities said Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
“Forty-two reformed Boko Haram members left the
Goudoumaria Training Centre” on Monday in the Diffa region near the Nigerian
border, a municipal official said.
Each of the Nigeriens departed equipped with the
tools to set up their own mechanics, plumbing, carpentry, sewing, or welding
businesses, the authorities said.
They had also followed a course on “practicing
moderate Islam” and were made to swear on a copy of the Quran that they would
not resort to violence.
Niger, the poorest country in the world according to
the
UN’s Human Development Index, is facing extremists attacks on two fronts.
Groups linked to Al-Qaeda and Daesh have carried out
massacres in the west of the country, while Islamist extremists associated with
Nigeria’s Boko Haram and Daesh have conducted attacks in the southeast.
As well as fighting the Boko Haram Islamist
extremists, the Nigerien authorities have offered amnesty to those who agree to
surrender and rejoin society.
Monday’s group was the third such class to have
completed the rehabilitation course, the municipal official said.
Since 2017, the Goudoumaria center has hosted “386
boarders who have successfully followed the re-socialization process”, Interior
Minister Hamadou Adamou Souley has said.
General Mahamadou Abou Tarka, the head of a
government institution tasked with building dialogue between communities, has
said the program has been a success, and would be repeated in the restive
Tillaberi region in the west of the country.
The interior minister and UN officials last week
visited the site of a new center for “the social rehabilitation of former
fighters of armed groups” in Tillaberi, public television reported.
Tents and a water tower had been set up at the site
in the Hamdalaye district.
The huge and unstable region of Tillaberi, around
100,000sq.km. in size, is located in the so-called “three borders” area between
Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali and has been the scene of several bloody attacks
by extremists movements since 2017.
Nigerien President
Mohamed Bazoum, in a new approach, has
initiated dialogue with Islamist extremist leaders in an attempt to keep the
peace.
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