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

Items recovered, Abubakar said, include a loaded AK 47 rifle, two Barretta pistols and copies of magazines. Others are one rocket launcher, two RPG bombs, two detonating bomb cables already in motion, 11 mini rockets launchers, two empty shells, two sealed brand new cartons of AK 47, ammunition containing 1,400 rounds each and seventy five 7.6 mobile ammunition.

Also 31 empty shells of AK 47 rifle ammunition, 833 rounds of RPG live ammunition, 29 rounds of 2.2mm pistol live ammunition and two sets of vehicle number plates, Yobe VA 459 MW Commercial and private number Kogi AA 840 LAM, were recovered.

[Description of Source: Port Harcourt Niger Delta Standard in English -- Rivers State owned daily]

Unknown Gunmen Kill Nonviolent Muslim Cleric in Northern Nigeria

AFP20110314678005 Paris AFP (World Service) in English 2359 GMT 13 Mar 11

[Outspoken Muslim cleric killed in northern Nigeria -- AFP Headline]

KANO, Nigeria, March 14, 2011 (AFP) - Gunmen shot and killed a Muslim cleric highly critical of a hardline Islamist sect, in an attack outside his home in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria, witnesses said.

The attackers, who were in a sports utility vehicle, gunned down Ibrahim Abdullahi Bolori outside his house, which is just next to a mosque, neighbours said.

"The sheikh came out of his house around 8:00 pm (1900 GMT) and sat outside. An unmarked jeep slowed down and gunmen shot him... five times before speeding off," said a neighbour Awwalu Ishaq.

Bolori had been an outspoken critic of the radical Islamist group known as Boko Haram, which in 2009 launched an uprising in Maiduguri, the provincial capital of Borno state.

The revolt was put down by a brutal military assault, but since 2010, attacks attributed to the group have left dozens dead, most of them policemen.

Another cleric who spoke against the sect was gunned down in the same city October last year at his house while giving a theology lesson to a student.

The sect, whose name means "education is a sin" has been blamed for killings targeting police officers, local community leaders, clerics and politicians in recent months.

Last September it launched an assault on a prison in Nigeria's northern Bauchi state, using machine guns and improvised explosives to break into the jail and free more than 700 inmates, many thought to have been sect members.

Boko Haram is fighting for the creation of an Islamic state in Nigeria, whose 150 million-strong population is divided roughly in half between Christians and Muslims.

The attacks come ahead of general elections in April and amid fears that the campaign and the vote itself could be marred by violence, as they have been in the past.

[Description of Source: Paris AFP (World Service) in English -- world news service of the independent French news agency Agence France Presse]

'Radical' Nigerian Islamist Group Reportedly Kills Community Leader in North

AFP20110322642003 Paris AFP (World Service) in English 22 Mar 11

[AFP headline:"Suspected Islamists kill community leader in Nigeria: police"]

KANO, Nigeria, March 22, 2011 (AFP) - Gunmen suspected to be members of a radical Islamist sect have shot dead a community leader in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, police said Tuesday.

Two gunmen on a motorcycle killed the neighbourhood leader as he was about to enter a mosque Monday evening and wounded two bystanders.

"Two motorcycle-riding gunmen approached the victim ... while he was entering a mosque for the evening prayers and shot him severally," said Lawal Abdullahi, police spokesman for Borno state.

The Borno state capital Maiduguri was the epicentre of a 2009 uprising staged by the sect known as Boko Haram.

Abdullahi said the gunmen were suspected members of Boko Haram, blamed for dozens of killings in recent months.

[Description of Source: Paris AFP (World Service) in English -- world news service of the independent French news agency Agence France Presse]

Nigeria: Authorities Report Attack on Police Station by Suspected Islamist Group

AFP20110402587003 Paris AFP (World Service) in English 0741 GMT 02 Apr 11

KANO, Nigeria, April 2, 2011 (AFP) - Suspected Islamists have attacked a police station in northern Nigeria with explosives ahead of Saturday's parliamentary vote, police said, but it was unclear if there were casualties.

"A number of gunmen suspected to be members of Boko Haram attacked Dutsen Tanshi police station," police spokesman Mohammed Barau told AFP of the attack in the city of Bauchi, referring to an Islamist sect that launched a 2009 uprising.

"They threw explosives into the police station which detonated and fired several shots before fleeing."

The attack occurred on Friday night, on the eve of parliamentary elections, the first in a series of landmark polls this month.

Sect members attacked the same police station in 2009 as they launched an uprising that was later put down by a brutal military assault which left hundreds dead.

The sect has been blamed for dozens of killings and attacks in recent months.

The amount of damage to the station was also unclear as the area had been cordoned off. Residents reported by phone that soldiers in vans were being deployed in the area.

The sect has claimed to be fighting for the creation of an Islamic state in Nigeria, a country of some 150 million people divided roughly in half between Christians and Muslims.

It was believed to have been routed after the assault in 2009, but it re-emerged last year with a series of shootings by gunmen on motorbikes, as well as attacks on police stations and a prison raid that freed hundreds of inmates.

Most of the recent attacks have occurred in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, where the sect's mosque and headquarters were located before being destroyed in the 2009 assault.

It was blamed for three church attacks on Christmas Eve that claimed six lives and left one of the churches burnt down.

The sect has been known by various names. Boko Haram means "Western education is sin" in the regional Hausa language.

[Description of Source: Paris AFP (World Service) in English -- world news service of the independent French news agency Agence France Presse]

Nigeria: Suspected Islamic Sect Members Attack Adamawa Jail; 14 Prisoners Escape

AFP20110423565002 Lagos This Day Online in English 23 Apr 11

[Report by Matthew Onah: "Boko Haram Raids Yola Prison, Frees 14"]

There was a jail break Friday at the Yola Prison in Adamawa State. It was carried out by suspected members of the Boko Haram sect.

Sources said six prisoners were swiftly arrested by the prison authorities while 14 others escaped.

Sources said the jailbreak occurred while some prison officials were observing the Friday Jumat prayers at Yola Central Mosque, adjacent the Yola Prison.

According to a prison source, the prisoners numbering over 40 were said to have overpowered the two warders at the second gate of the prisons and matched out but were accosted by the mobile policemen outside the facility.

It is believed that the jail break might be an attempt by Boko Haram to free some of their members that were transferred to the facility earlier in the year. A similar attempt was made at the Jimeta Prison three months ago.

The source disclosed that the policemen shot and wounded six of those attempting to escape, while at least 14 others are believed to have escaped.

When THISDAY called at the prison facility Friday afternoon, it was surrounded by armed anti-riot policemen.

[Description of Source: Lagos This Day Online in English -- Website of the independent daily; URL: http://www.thisdaylive.com/]

Islamic Sect Demands Replacement of Nigerian Constitution With Sharia Law

AFP20110425565001 Abuja Daily Trust Online in English 0327 GMT 25 Apr 11

[Report by Hamza Idris: "Boko Haram Gives Conditions for Cease-Fire"]

Members of the Boko Haram sect in Maiduguri yesterday said that insecurity and threats would continue in the country until the current democratic system is abolished. They are also demanding that the Nigerian Constitution should be replaced with Sharia law.

In a three page letter which was written in Arabic and Hausa and issued to newsmen in Maiduguri, the group said it would neither accept amnesty nor enter into any negotiation with the government.

"We are calling on Muslims all over the world, especially those in Nigeria, to understand that we need fairness from everybody because God has commanded us in the Holy Quran to be just in our dealings. We want to reiterate that we are warriors who are carrying out Jihad (religious war) in Nigeria and our struggle is based on the traditions of the holy prophet. We will never accept any system of government apart from the one stipulated by Islam because that is the only way that the Muslims can be liberated. We do not believe in any system of government, be it traditional or orthodox except the Islamic system and that is why we will keep on fighting against democracy, capitalism, socialism and whatever. We will not allow the Nigerian Constitution to replace the laws that have been enshrined in the Holy Qur'an, we will not allow adulterated conventional education (Boko) to replace Islamic teachings. We will not respect the Nigerian government because it is illegal. We will continue to fight its military and the police because they are not protecting Islam. We do not believe in the Nigerian judicial system and we will fight anyone who assists the government in perpetrating illegalities," the group said.

In the letter, members of the group made it clear that they were not sorry for all the people that have been killed.

"We are not sorry for all the people that we are killing, including ward heads, politicians, police and the army because they are associating themselves with the government by arresting Muslim brothers and sabotaging Islam. We want to make it clear that we are fighting not just because our mosque and centre of learning were destroyed in Maiduguri, or because we were chased out of our houses. The reason we are at war is because our freedom has been curtailed. For time immemorial, we have been advocating for freedom of worship and assembly and the need for everyone to believe in Allah. We have been preaching that people should jettison modern democracy and embrace Islam as their religion," the group added.

The group lamented that while they were carrying out their religious obligation in 2009, they were provoked by the government, which according to them connived with some Imams and ward heads and attacked their members in many states.

[Description of Source: Abuja Daily Trust Online in English -- Website of the independent pro-North daily; URL: http://dailytrust.dailytrust.com/index.php]

Three Bombs Explode in Nigeria's Borno State Capital

FEA20110425017155 - OSC Feature - Daily Trust Online 2344 GMT 24 Apr 11

[Report by Hamza Idris: "Triple Blasts Rock Maiduguri"]

Many people were feared to have been killed when three bombs were simultaneously detonated in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, last night.

Two of the explosives exploded at Tudu Palace Hotel in Madiganari area of the metropolis and the third one at one of the gates of the popular 'Tashar Kano'.

Many residents of Maiduguri heard loud and agonising sound around 8.30pm and the sky was later enveloped by smoke.

A witness who identified himself as Mohammed Nur said he saw the police evacuating some people from the hotel.

'Nobody can tell how many people died and how many were injured in the blasts because the hotel is a beehive of activities,' he said.

Police spokesman Mai Mamman could not be reached as at press time.

Our correspondent recalled that about six bombs have so far exploded in Maiduguri in the last few weeks.

It would be recalled that the Borno State Police Command announced the death of a police inspector in a bomb explosion in "London Ciki Ward" of Maiduguri on Wednesday night.

Mamman, the Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, told newsmen that the bomb was thrown at a police vehicle that was conveying policemen to evacuate bodies of two persons shot dead earlier in the day.

He said: "The police team had gone to evacuate corpses of persons shot by unknown gunmen around Zannari, but it was attacked around Gwange cemetery walls, as it approached London ciki.

"An inspector of police was killed by the explosive, while two other officers were seriously injured."

He said the command had sent the team to the densely populated area after receiving information about the killing of the two persons by suspected Boko Haram militants.

Earlier, on Saturday April 9 there was explosion at a polling station in the Unguwar Doki neighbourhood of Maiduguri during the parliamentary election.

[Description of Source: Abuja Daily Trust Online in English -- Website of the independent pro-North daily; URL: http://dailytrust.dailytrust.com/index.php]

Nigeria: Article Highlights Activities of Violent Islamic Sect

AFP20110513686011 Port Harcourt Niger Delta Standard in English 13 May 11 p 15

[Article by Femi Akinla: "Boko Haram in the North"]

I am very concerned that the Nigerian government appears to be watching helplessly while the Boko Haram threat in Borno and other states in the North degenerates. The extremist Islamic sect seems to be consolidating and gaining confidence in pursuing its agenda.

The group resumed its violent offensive last week, gunning down three prison warders and the wife of one of the slain warders in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. Two hours after these murders, a fifth victim, a policeman, was ambushed at his residence and shot in the head and chest by men suspected to be members of the sect. According to the police, the same assailants – two men riding on a motorcycle, armed with AK47 rifles – were believed to be responsible for all the killings. These targeted assassinations of policemen and other security officials in Maiduguri have continued for months unabated. The police, though confronting this menace with courage, remain vulnerable and incapable of protecting themselves against the deadly attacks. They are resigned to their fate.

Drawing inspiration from the federal government’s successful amnesty program for Niger Delta militants, Borno State’s governor-elect, Kashim Shettima, offered the olive branch to Boko Haram a fortnight ago. "As soon as the administration is inaugurated on 29 May, 2011," he told reporters, "we will sit down at a round table with the Boko Haram leaders on how its members can lay down their arms and move the state forward by restoring peace, unity and the protection of all lives and property in Borno State."

Boko Haram has rejected the peace offer. A certain Abu Darda, claiming to be the sect’s spokesman, said on the BBC Hausa Service earlier this week that the group did not need amnesty. "We are fighting for the enthronement of an Islamic State," he declared. "We have gone beyond the stage of dialogue and negotiation with the government." The spokesman gave one condition, however, on which the sect would lay down its arms: "abolition of the secular constitution and its replacement with Islamic Sharia law." Darda’s claims on the BBC Hausa Service are consistent with declarations made by Boko Haram in public posters it pasted in Maiduguri in February this year.

Apart from claiming responsibility for the assassination of the All Nigeria Peoples Party [ANPP] governorship candidate in Borno State, Modu Fannami Gubio, and six others, the group had gone on to declare, in the posters, that "This is the time for all of us to rise and change this government, and give way to a Muslim government."

I do not think the Nigerian government’s response to this explicit threat has been adequate. In fact, I do not remember the federal government having made any categorical statement on the demand by Boko Haram for the nation’s Constitution to be abolished and replaced with Islamic law. The government’s silence on the issue is puzzling and can be sustained no longer. A group has taken up arms in prosecution of its declared agenda to overthrow the present constitutional government and replace it with an Islamic government.

This seems to me to be a very serious threat, which the Nigerian government should confront squarely. Members of Boko Haram are within their rights to desire to be ruled under the strict tenets of their chosen religion, namely, Islamic Sharia law. The problem, however, is that the present Nigerian Constitution, at Section 10, prohibits any government in the country from adopting any religion as state religion. Thus, acceding to Boko Haram’s demand will mean the death of the Nigerian Constitution, and the dismantling of the present Nigerian State – unless the Constitution can be amended to accommodate state religion. Assuming, even, that groups like Boko Haram were able to successfully sponsor a constitutional amendment allowing state religion, the impossibility of implementing such a provision at the national level, or in states without one dominant religion, would become immediately obvious. Thus, the present arrangement whereby freedom of worship is guaranteed to the individual, under a secular government, is the only practical way to ensure peace in a diverse and plural society like Nigeria, with its multiplicity of tongues and faiths.

The federal government must uphold the constitutional guarantee of freedom of worship. Its apparent belief that the Boko Haram threat is restricted to a small part of the country (mainly Maiduguri and Bauchi) and so may be largely ignored as a localized nuisance could prove costly indeed. As the sect gradually takes root, improves its access to arms and finance, including external funding, and as its membership spreads, it may reach the point, eventually, of taking on the Nigerian government in a frontal armed struggle across many states. That day must be prevented by early action. National dialogue to resolve the issue should be among the options on the table.

[Description of Source: Port Harcourt Niger Delta Standard in English -- Rivers State owned daily]

Report Details bin Laden's Nigerian Agents, Says Boko Haram Linked to Al-Qaeda

AFP20110515619002 Lagos TheNews in English 09 May 11 - 16 May 11 14-19

[Report by Ademola Adegbamigbe: "Osama's Nigerian Agents"]

Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda head, is killed by an American strike force. But his affiliates are alive in Nigeria, representing danger

His image haunted Americans in their dreams and waking hours. Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, was their bogeyman from the pit of hell. Apart from his past activities in other parts of the world, he unleashed cataclysm on the United States, a situation that gave rise to a 10-year manhunt for him.

That nightmare ended in the wee hours of Sunday 1 May, when he was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by elite us Navy SEALS. His death was announced last week by President Barack Obama, who said at the East Room of the White House that "Justice has been done." Osama bin Laden, who many like to call by his first name, was shot in the head and chest and was buried later at sea.

However, the death of Osama has not signified the end of terrorism worldwide, especially in Nigeria where his adherents and affiliates are causing death and destruction on a massive scale. According to analysts, terrorists with al-Qaeda connections are alive in Nigeria, maintaining training camps and indoctrinating those disposed to militant Islam. Their hands are seen in the sectarian killings witnessed in the country.

The Capture of Osama

Obama was just four months in power when he decided to smoke Osama out of wherever hole he was hiding. On 2 Jun 2009, he signed a memo to CIA Director Leon Panetta, stating: "In order to ensure that we have expanded every effort, I direct you to provide me within 30 days a detailed operation plan for locating and bringing to justice" Osama bin Laden."

Obama revealed that last August, after years of painstaking work by the US intelligence community, he was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. Not sure of the veracity of the information, Obama said that it "took many months to run this thread to ground."

To be sure of their target, the US President met repeatedly with his national security team, working on more information that helped to ascertain that the terrorist's hideout had been located within a compound in Pakistan.

And finally, last week, he determined that he and his team had had enough intelligence to strike. Thus, Obama authorized an operation to get Osama. He was found in a big $1 million-two-storey property about 800 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy near Abbottabad city, northwest of Pakistan. It is about 150 km from Islamabad, the capital of the country.

According to the Associated Press, an American news agency, when one of bin Laden's most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led US pursuers to the doorstep of the wanted terrorist. That monitored phone call, as a US official was quoted as saying, "ended a year-long search for bin Laden's personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt."

The courier, in turn, led US intelligence officials to a walled compound in North-East Pakistan, Navy SEAL members shot bin Laden to death" Not a man to trust others with information about his whereabouts, not even his lieutenants, bin Laden depended on his couriers who helped to bring his messages in and out.

Hope for his capture started showing when inmates of the CIA secret detention centre started singing about an important courier, code-named Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, a bin Laden chum. In fact, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the third man in the al-Qaeda pecking order was arrested by the CIA, he confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti, but claimed the courier had no link with the terrorist organization.

But real confirmation came when, in 2004, the CIA nabbed Hassan Ghul, a top al-Qaeda operative in Iraq, who revealed that al-Kuwaiti was actually a courier who was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaeda's operational commander.

A US official was also quoted as saying that "finally, in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier."

But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaeda."

The US intelligence apparatus, therefore, reached a conclusion that if they could apprehend al-Kuwaiti, then the capture of bin Laden would be a matter of time. After many years, the CIA finally yanked off al-Kuwaiti's mask to identify the real man.

He is Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani born in Kuwait who, for long, had eluded security officials. Since bin Laden was so careful not to use phones or the Internet in his hideout, sleuths were always running into dead ends.

Then Ahmed, in the middle of last year, standing somewhere not far from bin Laden's hole, had a telephone conversation with someone who was under CIA surveillance. Things became clearer in August 2010 when he unwittingly led security operatives to bin Laden's compound.

The U.S kept this matter close to its chest, not even trusting close allies like Britain and France with it. In mid-February, the government was quite sure that a "high-value target" was hiding in the compound.

Where bin Laden lived is a three-storey building that has few windows facing the outside of the compound. There is a terrace on the third floor and the building has a seven-foot privacy wall and 12 to 18-foot walls topped with barbed wire.