ABUJA —
Ansaru, a breakaway militant group from Boko Haram which kidnapped seven
foreign construction workers in Bauch has explained why the group abduct
foreign hostages, saying it was meant to send a message to the western powers
on the kind of advice they give to Nigerian leaders.
A young member of the group who called himself
Mujahi Abu Nasir while speaking on the group’s activities also said their
sympathizers are everywhere in Nigeria but that the group avoid the killing of
fellow Nigerians.
Having split off from Boko Haram—the dominant
Nigerian extremist group responsible for weekly shootings and bombings — this
new group, Ansaru, said it eschews the killing of fellow Nigerians.
The West, which has often regarded the Islamist
uprising as a Nigerian domestic issue, has been explicitly put on notice by
Ansaru, adding an international dynamic to a conflict that has already cost
more than 3,000 lives.
Ansaru is believed to be responsible for the
December kidnapping of a French engineer, who is still missing, and for the
abduction of an Italian and a Briton, both construction workers, who were later
killed by their captors as a rescue attempt began last year.
It is also
likely that the group was involved in the February kidnapping of a French
family on the Cameroon-Nigeria border. They were released on Friday, under
conditions that are unclear, as well as the kidnapping of a German engineer in
Kano killed during a rescue effort last year.
“Any white man who is working with them” —
meaning “Zionists,” — “we can kidnap them, everywhere,” said Mujahid Abu Nasir.
He had slipped into Nigeria’s capital, Abuja,
with a bodyguard, travelling hundreds of miles from Ansaru’s secret
headquarters in the north.
He said he had come under the authorization of
Ansaru’s leader, Khalid al-Barnawi, who the United States said has close ties
to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and has designated a global terrorist.
For three hours, with chilling precision, Abu
Nasir, in a neatly pressed shirt and polished shoes, laid out Ansaru’s
philosophy, after reciting a verse from the Koran promising “hell fire” for
nonbelievers saying “opponents would be killed; Al Qaeda sympathizers were
everywhere in Nigeria; and Westerners would be kidnapped”.
He said Ansaru had been motivated by Al Qaeda
itself, trained by its affiliate in the region — Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb — and was now following in both their footsteps.
Before speaking or touching anything, Abu Nasir
carefully put on black gloves and examined a reporter’s pen to make sure there
was no camera hidden in it.
He said he was the son of a Nigerian aristocrat,
and he spoke Arabic, which he said he had perfected at a university in
Khartoum, Sudan. He understood English perfectly but would not speak it, on
principle.
“By taking these hostages, we are sending a message
that they should be careful about giving bad advice to our leaders,” he said of
Nigeria’s government, which he called a “puppet” of the West.
“They are as dangerous as Al Qaeda,” said
Maikaramba Sadiq of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organization. “They have the same
training as Al Qaeda. They have the same approach as Al Qaeda.”
Still, the two militant groups, Ansaru and Boko
Haram, retain ties. “They are with us now,” Abu Nasir said. “Whenever we hear
of oppression, we do operations together.”
At the slightest hint of rescue, mistaken or
otherwise, Ansaru appears ready to kill its hostages.
Abu Nasir spoke of his early recruitment by Al
Qaeda, rigorous training in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s desert camps, his
leaders’ contacts with Osama bin Laden and the current leader of Al Qaeda,
Ayman al-Zawahri, and disagreements with Boko Haram’s indiscriminate methods.
He said he had attended an Islamic college in
the northern metropolis of Kano, which has since become a hotbed of Boko Haram
radicalism. Then, “for the zeal of seeking knowledge,” he went to Khartoum, he
said, where it was “Al Qaeda propagators who initiated me into the clique.”
The recruiters took him to the southern deserts
of Algeria and then to Mauritania for a rigorous training course by Al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb. For six months, he said, he trained directly under Abu
Zeid. Of five who came with him from Sudan, he said, two died during training.
“Everything the security forces get, we get double that,” he said of Ansaru’s
training regimen.
Returning to Nigeria in 2008, Abu Nasir said, he
went underground in Lagos. “Thousands” are like him, he said, “some who work in
government, some businessmen, some teachers.”
“Any leader who does not listen to the warnings
of his people, he is going to pay a heavy price,” Abu Nasir said. “We are not
going to take one step back.”
Source: Vanguard
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