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An investigation carried out over several years, perhaps the most damning account yet of the military response to Boko Haram, casts a shadow over the first foreign trip of the new Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, during which he is set to discuss a fresh regional strategy against the Islamist group.

Amnesty set out on Wednesday the case against five senior Nigerian officers in a 133-page report based on hundreds of interviews, including with military sources, and leaked defence ministry documents.

During security operations against Boko Haram in the north-east, it says the armed forces “committed countless acts of torture; hundreds, if not thousands, of Nigerians have become victims of enforced disappearance; and at least 7,000 people have died in military detention as a result of starvation, extreme overcrowding and denial of medical assistance”.

The report, Stars on Their Shoulders. Blood on Their Hands: War Crimes Committed by the Nigerian Military, also alleges that more than 1,200 people have been extrajudicially executed by soldiers or allied vigilante groups since February 2012. It claims the worst case took place on 14 March 2014 when the military killed more than 640 detainees who had fled Giwa barracks after Boko Haram attacked.

Many of these killings appear to be reprisals following attacks. A senior military official told Amnesty that soldiers “go to the nearest place and kill all the youths … people killed may be innocent and not armed”.
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A former detainee who spent four months in detention described how, on arrival, the soldiers said: “Welcome to your die house. Welcome to your place of death.” Only 11 of 122 men he was arrested with survived, he said.