{Cameroon has sentenced 89 members of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram to death, local media report.}<\/p>\n
They were convicted on terror charges by a military court for their roles in several attacks in Cameroon’s northern region which borders Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Cameroon passed an anti-terror law in 2014 which introduced the death sentence.<\/p>\n
This is the first time the death sentenced has been used since that law was passed.<\/p>\n
The 89 are among 850 people arrested in Cameroon on charges of links to Boko Haram.
\nFollowing the death sentences, a local human rights group has called for reforms to Cameroon’s justice system.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people have been killed in a spate of attacks in Cameroon since it joined a regional force set up to tackle the militants last year.<\/p>\n
{{Boko Haram at a glance:}}<\/p>\n
Founded in 2002, initially focused on opposing Western-style education – Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” in the Hausa language<\/p>\n
Launched military operations in 2009<\/p>\n
Thousands killed, mostly in north-eastern Nigeria, abducted hundreds, including at least 200 schoolgirls<\/p>\n
Joined Islamic State, now calls itself “West African province”<\/p>\n
Seized large area in north-east, where it declared caliphate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Cameroon has sentenced 89 members of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram to death, local media report.} They were convicted on terror charges by a military court for their roles in several attacks in Cameroon’s northern region which borders Nigeria. Cameroon passed an anti-terror law in 2014 which introduced the death sentence. This is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23980"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23980"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}