Khartoum, August 01: Nigerian security forces claimed victory yesterday over a sect blamed for some of the worst violence to rock the West African country for years after police shot dead its leader.
While police said that he died in a shootout human rights campaigners have alleged that he had been executed without due process and warned of revenge attacks to come.
Mohammed Yusuf, leader of the Nigerian Taleban, was killed after he was captured on Thursday night at the end of a four-day manhunt. Hundreds of people gathered yesterday to see Yusuf’s corpse, laid on the ground outside the police headquarters alongside the bodies of other presumed members of his group in the northern city of Maiduguri.
Dora Akunyili, the Nigerian Information Minister, welcomed Yusuf’s death. She told reporters that it was positive for the country and said that the Government “does not condone extrajudicial killings” but added: “What is important is that he [Yusuf] has been taken out of the way, to stop him using people to cause mayhem.”
The militant group led by Yusuf, a militant cleric who professed admiration for Osama bin Laden, has been blamed for days of violent unrest in which hundreds of people died in clashes between his followers and security forces in the north.
“This group operates under a charismatic leader. They will no more have any inspiration,” a spokesman for the National Police said. “The leader who they thought was invincible and immortal has now been proved otherwise.” He added that there were still pockets of violence in the largely Muslim north, but otherwise “life is back to normal”.
The Government was concerned that the violence would degenerate into Muslim-Christian killings that periodically hit Africa’s most populous nation but have not taken place for several years.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch called for an investigation. “The Nigerian authorities must act immediately to hold to account all those responsible for this unlawful killing and any others associated with the recent violence in northern Nigeria,” Corinne Dufka, its senior West Africa researcher, said.
The authorities collected hundreds of bodies from the streets of Maiduguri, the base of the cleric and his diehard followers, consisting mainly of unemployed university students.
It was unclear if the death of Yusuf would end the violence or inspire revenge attacks by the group, also known as the Boko Haram sect, which seeks the imposition of strict Sharia in the country.
Yusuf had encouraged his followers to rid themselves of all material wealth while he was chauffeured around in a Mercedes all-terrain vehicle and amassed dozens of vehicles at his compound.
Troops shelled the compound on Wednesday but the 39-year-old leader escaped with about 300 followers, some of them armed. Officials said that he was found on Thursday in a goat pen at his in-laws’ home in the northern town of Kernawa.
Officials imposed partial Sharia in much of the north but Boko Haram members were increasingly angry full Islamic law had not been implemented. Militants attacked police stations, churches, prisons and government buildings in a wave of violence that began last Sunday in Borno state and quickly spread to three other northern states. At least 300 people are thought to have died although some estimates put the death toll at 600.
-Agencies