Nigeria: 600 Boko Haram members released

ABUJA, Nigeria

Some 600 Boko Haram members were freed in Nigeria on Monday after they regretted their membership and completed a rehabilitation and reintegration program.

Bamidele Shafa, spokesperson for the Nigerian military’s Operation Safe Corridor, said members of the terror group who were caught in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Republic of Nigeria.

Shafa said the freed men will not rejoin Boko Haram and that 1,400 other Boko Haram fighters who renounced their membership were released previously.

He said 280 terrorists were now at the rehabilitation center.

Boko Haram terrorist attacks have killed over 30,000 people and displaced about 3 million since July 2009, when the violence started in the country's northeast states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe across an area roughly the size of Belgium.