Tag: boko haram

•Says he was accused of founding Boko Haram sect

FORMER militant leader, Mujahadeen Asari Dokubo, yesterday relived his experience in the hands of the Benin Republic police who arrested him last week.

He said Beninous authorities accused him of founding and sponsoring the Islamic sect, Boko Haram.

Dokubo, who was released following the intervention of President Goodluck Jonathan, spoke on Liberty Radio, Kaduna.

He is currently based in the capital, Cotonou, where he runs a chain of businesses including a private university.

But he denied reports that he was flown to Abuja in a Presidential jet after his release.

He claimed that his arrest was instigated by some people in Benin who are envious of his achievements.

He said: “Some people thought that my university will force their own to close down. They said I’m an English speaking person and my schools are doing very well. They are tri-lingual, English, French and Arabic and so many people are getting attracted.

“From the way they planned it, there was no way I could have been released because they (police) took my visa; my businesses were closed down, and they alleged that I am the founder of Boko Haram. That was the charges that they leveled at me: that I am the founder of Boko Haram.

“That I built some mosques in Benin Republic and they closed down the mosques, saying why should I be building mosques in my schools. I was left incommunicado, all my staff were arrested.

“We don’t know who (instigators of arrest) they are, but from the question I was asked, it all points to one area and that is the university. All the security services in Benin, everybody was involved.

Dokubo attributed the escalation of the Boko Haram violence to the killing of the leader of the sect, Muhammed Yusuf, during the Yar’Adua administration.

On the proposed national conference, he said: “in a situation where you don’t take decision by yourself, as events come, you tackle them. If we are to take decisions by ourselves, we would have preferred the conference holding before election.

“But the conference is not sovereign. When we go to the conference, we will go with our agenda. We want sovereign national conference, not national conference.

“If we boycott the conference, we will not succeed. So we would go to the conference, even if we have issue with the conference, on nomenclature, because the conference should be totally sovereign.”

Human Rights Watch says Islamic extremists in the Northeast are abducting and apparently raping women and girls.

The group,in a report on Thursday, also criticized the federal government for failing to account for hundreds of men and boys rounded up by security forces using emergency powers in the Islamic uprising.

The London-based organization quoted witnesses saying hundreds have died of dehydration, illness and beatings, while many other detainees have been executed.

It quoted commanders of vigilance groups describing the rescue of kidnapped women and girls in attacks on hideouts of the Boko Haram terrorist network. Some were pregnant and others had babies.

It did not spare the Civilian Joint Task Force whose emergence,it said , has “added a worrisome new dimension to the violence.”

It said: “Civilian Joint Task Force members inform security forces about presumed local Boko Haram activity; the Islamist group then retaliates against both the neighbourhood vigilante group and the broader community.

Daniel Bekele, Africa director at HRW, said: “For a group that claims to be religious, Boko Haram’s tactics are the most profane acts we can imagine.The killing and mutilation of ordinary Nigerians, the abduction and rape of women and girls, and the use of children for fighting are horrifying human rights violations.”

In the course of compiling the report, HRW claimed to have interviewed more than 60 victims, witnesses, medical personnel, members of local rights groups, Civilian Joint Task Force commanders and government officials over nine days in Kano and Maiduguri.

Its words:“Commanders of the Civilian Joint Task Force, working with security forces, said that they had rescued 26 abducted women and girls from a Boko Haram stronghold in Maiduguri and later in Sambisa Forest. Some of the women and girls were pregnant; others had babies. The commanders told Human Rights Watch that a number of the girls had been abducted while hawking wares on the street or working on farms in remote villages. Many girls who were rescued or had escaped were sent off by their families to distant cities like Abuja and Lagos to avoid the stigma of rape or pregnancy outside of marriage, activists said.

“Several witnesses said they saw children in the ranks of Boko Haram during attacks. In Maiduguri, Human Rights Watch researchers saw a video recording of the interrogation by security forces of a 14-year-old boy who described the role he played in Boko Haram operations. Commanders of the Civilian Joint Task Force said they had freed numerous children during a 2013 attack on a Boko Haram base in Sambisa Forest.

“Human Rights Watch also observed children who appeared to be aged 15 to 17 manning checkpoints for the Civilian Joint Task Force in Maiduguri; other witnesses described seeing children manning checkpoints elsewhere in Borno and Yobe states.”

Witnesses described Boko Haram laying siege to towns, villages and highways; looting and burning houses, shops, and vehicles; and executing and decapitating people, some of whom they accused of aiding the Civilian Joint Task Force. In July, the combined efforts of the security forces and Civilian Joint Task Force appeared to have pushed Boko Haram out of Maiduguri. Since then, the group has carried out numerous attacks in the nearby towns of Damaturu, Benisheikh and Gamboru.

Boko Haram’s September 17 attack on Benisheikh, 74 kilometres west of Maiduguri, killed at least 142 people and was the most lethal incident in Borno State since 2010. A man who went to Benisheikh to look for a colleague on the morning after the attack described what he saw at a checkpoint that had been set up by Boko Haram and that was crowded with burned vehicles:

“There were bodies all over… three here, two there, four near the next – all lying face down, dead next to their vehicle. Then I saw a long line of bodies… about 30 of them. But weirdly, one of the trucks was carrying cows which were still alive. Who are these people who kill the human beings, yet leave the cows standing?” he said.

Another witness described seeing about 20 women abducted during the September 17 Benisheikh attack. A health worker in Maiduguri told Human Rights Watch that he attended to a 15-year-old girl who had recently returned home pregnant several months after Boko Haram abducted her.