Nigeria: Report Gives Details, Says Terrorist Groups Gaining Foothold in Nigeria

[Description of Source: Lagos The Guardian Online in English -- Website of the widely read independent daily, aimed at up-market readership; URL: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/]

Report Says UN Building Bombing Style, Scope Suggests Foreign Connection

AFP20110905619002 Lagos Business Hallmark in English 29 Aug 11 - 05 Sep 11 5

[Report by Ayoola Olaoluwa: "Bombings; Security experts identify danger zones"]

There is growing fear within the various security agencies saddled with the task of keeping the country safe over an intelligence report suggesting that Islamic militants are planning more deadly attacks against specific institutions across the country.

This is coming on the heels of the last attack on the United Nations building in Abuja by a suicide bomber suspected to be a member of the Boko Haram sect. Over 20 people lost their lives in the attack.

The explosion took place after a Honda CR-V crashed into the main UN building on Independence Avenue in the Central Business District, Abuja. The blast destroyed the reception area and tore out the first floor of the four-story building which houses at least 12 UN agencies, leaving concrete beams exposed and shattered glass strewn over the compound.

Information reaching BH reveals that the nation’s security agencies had identified some public institutions as well as foreign embassies likely to be targeted by Boko Haram militants’ sect, a terrorist Islamist group that seeks the imposition of Shariah law in Nigeria.

"The targeting of the UN building is in line with the militant group's desire to undermine the Nigerian state. We think that while the Nigerian state and security force targets will continue to be the group's priority, the targeting of the UN building indicates a more global outlook probably influenced by the al-Qaeda ideology, declared a State Security Service [SSS] operative who spoke with BH.

He also maintained that the scale of the attack represents an evolution from previous suicide bombings and is a possible indicator of operational contact with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [AQIM]. "This places foreign embassies, international hotels in Abuja, and also Christian religious sites such as the National Church at risk of attack, together with foreign individuals such as NGO staff and journalists visiting the area", he declared.

Buttressing this claim, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, advised its citizens against visiting Nigeria without taking out insurance policies. In its latest travel advice to British citizens, it stated that: "There is a high threat from terrorism in Nigeria.

You are advised to exercise caution and observe vigilance at all times, particularly in areas where there are political or other large public gatherings. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including places such as markets, hotels, shopping centers, places of worship and other areas frequented by expatriates and foreign travelers. You should take out comprehensive travel and medical insurance before travelling.

This advice has been reviewed and reissued with an amendment to the Travel Summary and the Safety and Security – Terrorism section (update on explosion at the UN building in Abuja. The overall level of the advice has not changed; we advise against all but essential travel to Abia State, Bauchi State and to Jos and its surrounding areas; we advise against all travel to some other areas of Nigeria."

Some security experts who also spoke to BH on the situation in the country disclosed that several public institutions, including the State House, Abuja, the National Assembly Complex, the American embassy, the British High Commission, Israeli embassy, oil installations, Christian gatherings or worship centers are all prone to attack.

BH also recalls that the sect had in an e-mail message to the media revealed that their main target is the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Security experts’ fear is borne out of the fact that unlike before when the Boko Haram group primarily targeted security forces and government assets, especially in Borno and Yobe States, its attacks have spread to major cities in the Middle Belt and northeastern states, particularly Bauchi, Kano, Niger,Katsina, and Abuja in the past few months.

"We had previously assessed that the failed Maiduguri suicide bombing on 15 Aug represented no evolution in IED capability on the part of Boko Haram and therefore likely no operational support from AQIM as yet.

This was because the Maiduguri bomber had attempted to use a device made from gas cylinders rather than from military or home-made explosive. Gas cylinders are difficult to use in VBIEDs because of the need to ensure the correct gas/air mix inside the car, and the difficulty of initiation.

The scale of the explosion at the UN building however suggests that a different method was used, for instance involving military grade explosive such as Semtex, or explosive made from ammonium nitrate. This would be a clearer indication that training or supply lines have been opened between the Boko Haram and AQIM," he said.

BH also learnt that the group was able to access the target in spite of two security checkpoints, suggesting that it may have had support from security forces. This suggests that the group's capability to attack hard targets such as embassies or hotels in Abuja and other northern cities has increased significantly.

However, it was also learnt that there are hints of specific threats against these institutions, which had led to the beefing of security around them. Our correspondent in Abuja confirmed that there are signs of security beef-up in the city with armed personnel, including soldiers now manning most government institutions and foreign embassies.

Meanwhile, investigation has started in earnest into the last suicide car-bomb attack on the United Nations office complex in Abuja. The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Moshood Jimoh said that "investigation has started, that's all I can tell you for now."

The Boko Haram group has been blamed by the federal government for a series of bomb attacks and killings since last year. Gunmen suspected to be members of the group attacked a police station and a bank on 25 Aug in the northeastern town of Gombe, killing 16 people, including five police officers, a soldier and 10 bank customers.

[Description of Source: Lagos Business Hallmark in English - independent weekly newspaper]

Nigeria: Report Says Al-Qa'ida Trained Islamic Sect Members To Bomb UN Office

AFP20110905598015 Isheri Nigerian Compass Online in English 2300 GMT 04 Sep 11

[Unattributed report: "Security Reports Indicate Boko Haram Trained by Al-Qaeda"]

Members of Boko Haram, the group believed responsible for the suicide bombing of a United Nations' building in Abuja, have received training from al Qaeda-affiliated groups in Afghanistan and Algeria, according to a recent intelligence report.

The report by the State Security Service (SSS) was submitted to senior government officials in June, a person familiar with it said. That marked roughly the beginning of a string of attacks attributed to the group.

The latest attack, the suicide bombing of the U.N. Compound, in Abuja, marked what is believed to be Boko Haram's first assault on an international target.

The June report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, didn't appear to contain specific intelligence on future attacks. But critics say the bombing attempts that followed its submission to top officials--paired with mounting evidence that some Boko Haram members are pursuing higher profile al Qaeda-style attacks on international targets--highlights what they say is an intelligence service hobbled by poor coordination and corruption within its ranks.

These people point in particular to a finding in the report that four of the five top members of Boko Haram have been in police custody at least once in recent years but have been released. The report doesn't state reasons for the releases.

A spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan didn't respond to requests for comment about the report. A spokeswoman for the state security service declined to speak about the report or Boko Haram.

Several of the report's findings were confirmed by other Nigerian and Western security officials

The report presents a more detailed picture of foreign terror links than the government has acknowledged. It portrays Boko Haram as an Islamist group with Jihadist aspirations and more substantial international connections than previously believed.

It says group members began traveling abroad for weapons training as early as 2002, with a trip that included several members heading to Mauritania.

In 2007, the report says, members of Boko Haram traveled to Afghanistan to receive training in the making of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and in suicide-bombing techniques.

The report names a man from Adamawa state it says "led a group of members to Afghanistan for training on IEDs and on their return they imparted their knowledge to others."

An undercover security official in the country's north confirmed that Boko Haram members have received training in Afghanistan. "They usually fly there from neighboring countries, like Niger or Chad," the official said.

The report also says Boko Haram members received combat and bombmaking training in Mauritania and in Algeria with members of al Qaeda's north Africa branch, known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.

Algeria-based AQIM has claimed credit for several killings and kidnappings of foreigners in west Africa, including the suicide bombing of an Algerian military academy that killed 18 people. The group still has at least four French hostages kidnapped last September in Mali.

A U.S. official said it was unlikely that Boko Haram was active enough before 2009 to send people in considerable numbers to train elsewhere.

But by 2009, this official said, Boko Haram made contacts and established relationships with members of AQIM. In 2010, they began training alongside elements of AQIM in northern Mali.

"Within the last year, they've established more contacts and training opportunities with AQIM," said the U.S. official. "What we're seeing now is probably the result of the additional radicalisation of their viewpoints and the training."

The official said Boko Haram is estimated to number a few hundred people. "This is not a widespread, huge movement," the U.S. official said.

Many inside the government criticise President Jonathan and the security agencies for not preventing the recent attacks thought to have been carried out by Boko Haram. The group is blamed for t he June bombing of a northern Nigeria beer garden that killed 25 people, and a bombing at the police headquarters in Abuja that same month.

There is no indication that the Boko Haram members who received training abroad are those responsible for the latest bombing.

The group has a long list of those it aims to attack: "local government institutions and security agencies, moderate Muslims, non-Muslims thought to be responsible for social, economic and political misfortune against the north [of Nigeria], certain clerics, churches, Christian businesses, and relaxation spots," according to the report. It doesn't offer details of how it would attack these targets.

Several northern Nigerian leaders have suggested amnesty for Boko Haram members, arguing that if the president can give amnesty to Niger Delta militants, he can do the same for northern militants.

[Description of Source: Isheri Nigerian Compass Online in English -- Website of the privately owned newspaper close to former Rivers State Governor Peter Odili; URL: http://www.compassnewspaper.com]

Commentary Examines Al-Qa'ida's Changing Modus Operandi

EUP20110905029008 Paris LeFigaro.fr in French 05 Sep 11

[Commentary by Georges Malbrunot: "Al-Qa'ida's New Battlefields"]

The jihadist underground organization has been forced to change its modus operandi but it has not laid down its arms.

A few years ago, the Moroccan and French intelligence services succeeded in breaking up a Tangiers-based Al-Qa'ida cell that was going to use explosives for terrorist attacks. Its sponsors did not come from Pakistan, where Usama Bin Ladin was hiding, but from Saudi Arabia. And in Morocco, its operational agents had recruited a pimp, to serve as a cover, who was paid generously.

"Terrorists are ready to ally themselves with people who are at the opposite end of their alleged principles," recalls one master spy. And one of his police colleagues adds, 10 years after the tragedy of 11 September, "the world is now facing a dynamic of regional threats posed by Al-Qa'ida subsidiaries worldwide." The Al-Qa'ida leadership around Ayman al-Zawahiri that succeeded Bin Ladin after he was eliminated and which is being hunted down by American drones on the Afghan-Pakistan border, is no longer the major threat to the West.

This dispersed threat now comes from Al-Qa'ida branches in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP -- Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula], Maghreb [AQIM -- Al-Qa'ida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb] and more generally in Africa, where "it mixes with organized criminals and all sorts of trafficking."

A "Second Afghanistan"

The modus operandi has also been forced to evolve. Bin Ladin dreamed of repeating a large-scale terrorist attack like those on 11 September 2001. The terrorists, who are often short of money, now favor the individual suicide-bomber attack, which is much easier to carry out as well as poisonings, using some recipe they have unearthed from Internet, and let us not forget hostage taking which is destined to develop further, especially in Africa.

Among the terrorist organization's subsidiaries that have been created over the past few years, Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula is the most dangerous (especially for Americans) both for historical and geographic reasons. Yemen, where AQAP has taken refuge since 2009, is Bin Ladin's ancestral homeland. Its leaders, Nasser al-Wahishi and Qassem al-Rahimi, were respectively Bin Ladin's secretary and an Al-Qa'ida military cadre in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Moreover, Yemen, with its caves in which to hide and its flourishing tribes, is a "second Afghanistan."

Over the past few years, AQAP planned two failed attacks on American cities and inspired a young Muslim American soldier who succeeded, for his part, in killing 13 soldiers inside their base. Today, AQAP would like to produce ricin, a poison that could be concealed in small bombs. Thus, the most imaginative of Al-Qa'ida subsidiaries is seeking to "mount" attacks of lesser importance but which should create panic among American society and become a drain on an economy that would find itself forced to spend significant amounts of money securing air traffic in particular.

AQAP and its American preacher of Yemeni origin, Anwar al-Awlaqi, are banking on Inspire, their Internet English language magazine, [to convince] "domestic terrorists" to carry out their nasty jobs. AQAP has also established contact with Somalia's Al-Shababs on the other side of the Red Sea, where apprentice jihadists from Europe and the United States have flocked. A possible link-up of AQAP and the pirates that operate in the Strait of Aden also worries the West. However, it is mostly the conditions of the counter terrorism war to be waged in Yemen that have led the Americans to disengage somewhat on behalf of neighboring Saudi Arabia: AQAP's second target. The American military is currently building an airport for drones in Saudi Arabia's southern territory, not far from the Yemeni border, for future raids into the territory of its turbulent neighbor, which has been shaken by a six-month revolt whose outcome is still uncertain.

Banditry and Ransoms

While Al-Qa'ida in Iraq has been severely weakened (thanks to support from the tribes), in Africa, on the other hand, AQIM is feeding on the fertile ground of banditry, ransoms paid to get hostages released, and more recently on the cannons and ground-air missiles retrieved from Colonel Al-Qadhafi's barracks.

Another one of these threats, which is still far from the media spotlight, holds sway further south. It is the threat from the Boko Haram sect of northeastern Nigeria. This fundamentalist sect rejects not only Christian (the majority in Nigeria) values, but also all other Western values. As in Yemen or in Afghanistan, Boko Haram is feeding on the decaying Nigerian state. Boko Haram has just claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack one week ago on the United Nations headquarters in Abuja that killed 18 persons.

[Description of Source: Paris LeFigaro.fr in French -- Website of Le Figaro, leading center-right daily; URL: http://www.lefigaro.fr]

Nigeria: State Security Services Uncovers Bomb-Making Factory Near Abuja

AFP20110907598001 Lagos Business Day Online in English 2300 GMT 06 Sep 11

[Unattributed report: "SSS Discovers Bomb Factory in Niger State, Arrests Six People; One Suspect From Niger Republic"]

The State Security Services (SSS) said on Tuesday, they had found a bomb-making factory near Abuja and had arrested six suspected members or people connected with violent Islamist sect Boko Haram, including a foreign fighter from neighbouring Niger.

Authorities are investigating a bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Abuja, on August 26 that killed 23 people.

Last week, they arrested two suspected Boko Haram members over the attack and said they suspected that a third member with an al Qaeda connection led the plot.

A statement from the SSS said the six people detained were wanted in connection with the bombings of an electoral commission office on April 8, just before presidential elections, and of a church on July 10 -- both in Suleja, near Abuja. They were also wanted for the killing of four policemen.

It did not link them directly with the Abuja bomb on the U.N. headquarters.

"The five suspects all confessed that the main supplier of the explosive materials used for their bombing operations is a miner from Nasarawa State, who the Service eventually arrested on 30th August, 2011," the statement from SSS spokeswoman Maryln Ogar said.

"A suspect, who is a Nigerienne national, was apprehended in connection with the bombing incident in Suleja. He confessed to his involvement in the bombings as well as his membership of the Boko Haram sect. His confession led to the arrest of a 31 year old indigene of Imo State who converted to Islam in 2003. The second suspect, who is born of a Nigerienne mother, was brought up in Niger Republic, where he had his early education. He also admitted to being a member of the Boko Haram sect as well as having worked in concert with a third suspect from Kano State, to carry out attacks in Suleja. Their confessions led to further arrest of two accomplices from Borno State ",

"A non-descript building where the Improvised Explosive Devices (I.E.Ds) are assembled has been uncovered at an area popularly known as Chechnya, Hayin-Uku village," she said.

The statement listed what it called "the merchandise of death" found at the factory. It included one gas cylinder, one battery connected to a detonator, two damaged detonators; one locally made revolver; one gun butt; two knives; ten GSM handsets with SIM cards; one ceiling fan coil; two laptop computers and 37 unused metallic oil filters.

Other findings included two metallic filters primed for bombing; two metallic cylinders; one clock connected to a primed bladeless ceiling fan with 9 volts batteries ready for use; Some pieces of shrapnel; Honda Civic car with Borno State registration number AG94MNG; Two hundred (200) pieces of detonators; Some detonating cords (red colour); A Sony remote control; five battery chargers; and a black bag containing detonating cables.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in Hausa language, has become President Goodluck Jonathan's most intractable security challenge.

It has carried out frequent shootings or attacks with homemade bombs against security services and civilians in the northeast.

The U.N. bombing marks an increase in the sophistication of Boko Haram's attacks, possibly with better explosives, and an escalation from local to international targets, analysts say.

[Description of Source: Lagos Business Day Online in English -- Website of the privately owned Nigerian online business news portal; URL: http://www.businessdayonline.com]

Nigeria: Intelligence Report Says Islamic Sect Plans To Bomb Defense HQ

AFP20110909598001 Ibadan Nigerian Tribune Online in English 09 Sep 11

[Report by Chris Agbambu and Okey Muogbo: "Boko Haram Plans To Bomb Defence Headquarters -Report"]

The armed forces are in possession of intelligence report that the Boko Haram sect plans to bomb the Defence Headquarters, popularly called "Boat House."

Towards this end, the military has put additional security measures in place in order to forestall such an incident.

Informed sources in the military disclosed to the Nigerian Tribune that the armed forces are not taking any chances about the threat, as movement is now restricted within the Defence Headquarters complex.

Nigerian Tribune gathered that the Director of Intelligence in the Army, Navy and Air Force headquarters are now coordinating security arrangements at the Defence Headquarters and supervised by a Major-General from the headquarters.

The source revealed that anybody coming to the Defence Headquarters complex must be on appointment from a senior military officer or else no entry for such a visitor.

Also, the road by the gate of the Defence Headquarters has been blocked with military vehicles, with fierce-looking armed soldiers manning it.

The source added that the military high command had consequently advised military officers within the complex to mind the type of visitors they invite into the complex.

Nigerian Tribune gathered that additional security equipment to check vehicles and visitors have been acquired by the armed forces and have already been put to use.

A top source at the Defence Headquarters told the Nigerian Tribune that "the military is the last hope of every Nigerian, and once this place is targeted, then the country is in trouble and that is why additional security measures are being put in place."

Only one entrance is designated for the service chiefs and senior military officers into the Defence Headquarters which no private car is allowed to use.

The source disclosed that the Boko Haram sect was boasting that since they had succeeded in bombing the Police Headquarters and the United Nations building, there was nothing preventing them from bombing the Defence Headquarters.

Also, the exit gate at the Police Headquarters, which has been under lock since the bombing of the place three months ago, has been blocked with an armoured vehicle to prevent anyone launching an attack from there, just as it was done in the UN House bombing where the bomber drove through a disused entrance.

'Boko Haram'll not disintegrate Nigeria'

The presidential adviser on Niger Delta Affairs and chief executive officer of the Amnesty Programme, Honourable Kingsley Kuku, in Abuja, on Thursday, said the activities of the Islamic group, Boko Haram, would not lead to the break up of Nigeria.

Speaking on the implementation of the amnesty programme in the first 100 days of the present administration, Kuku said the crisis would be resolved without disintegrating the country.

He recalled that the country had gone through similar, if not greater challenges since independence, from which it emerged even stronger.

Kuku said God had been kind to Nigeria in the past, adding that he did not expect the Boko Haram insurgency to destroy the country.

On the achievements of the amnesty office, Kuku said, "I wish to report to Nigerians that in the first 100 days of the Jonathan administration, the amnesty programme for ex-militants in the Niger Delta recorded profound successes; and, as a result, peace, safety, security and development are being consolidated in the Niger Delta."