Nigerian Military Targeted Journalists' Phones, Computers With "Forensic Search" for Sources

Hamza Idris, an editor with the Nigerian Daily Trust, was at the newspaper's central office on January 6 when the military arrived looking for him. Soldiers with AK47s walked between the newsroom desks repeating his name, he told CPJ. It was the second raid on the paper that day; the first hit the bureau based in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, where Idris had worked for years.

The soldiers did not know what Idris looked like and his colleagues did not point him out, he said. Unable to find their target, they ordered everyone to evacuate and seized 24 of the paper's computers. Idris simply filed out with everyone else. In Maiduguri, however, the military arrested Uthman Abubakar, the Daily Trust northeastern regional editor, with his two phones and computer, CPJ reported at the time. He was held for two days, interrogated about his sources for a report written with Idris about a military operation in the region, and then released without charge.

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