Boko Haram planned to paralyse Kaduna – GOC

Posted by admin Boko Haram, Headlines, Kaduna, State News Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

The General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Mechanised Division, Kaduna, Major-General Garba Wahab, on Tuesday revealed that the arrest of 33 members of the terrorist Islamic sect, Boko Haram, prevented the plan to unleash terror on Kaduna State.

Garba said the sect had planned to paralyse the state on Monday but that the arrest of the 33 by his men prevented Boko Haram from wreaking havoc on Kaduna.

The Kaduna State government had said that those arrested by the military were not members of the dreaded violent sect. The state Commissioner for Information, Alhaji Saidu Adamu, told newsmen in Kaduna that there was no truth in the claim by the military that the arrested suspects were members of Boko Haram. Adamu decried the tendency to label anybody arrested in the state as Boko Haram members.

He said, “It is quite unfortunate that a story of about two weeks ago, regarding security raid on a popular social centre has been re-adjusted and is now causing fear and tension in the hearts of residents.

“This is far from the reality of what really happened. We want to categorically state that there is no truth in that assertion that soldiers arrested 33 Boko Haram members in Kaduna. We find it necessary to make this clarification to put the record straight and calm down all unnecessary tensions.”

But the GOC said the suspects were prepared to strike if not that they were arrested, adding that the Army had no reason whatsoever to arrest innocent Nigerians without cause.

He noted that among the arrested men were 13 Nigeriens and that the suspects hid their weapons in an undisclosed place. He said that on the day of the raid, 100 suspects were picked up and that 67 of them were released after thorough investigation indicated that they were innocent.

Meanwhile, a former officer of the State Security Service, Mr. Bukar Tarha, on Tuesday told a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja that a suspect, Mallam Mohammed Suleiman Ashafa, charged by the Federal Government for allegedly being a member of Boko Haram, had previously admitted his involvement in national and international terrorism.

Ashafa had been initially arrested and charged with allegedly having links with the al-Qaeda terrorist network, but the charge was later changed to alleged membership of the Boko Haram sect.

Terha, a prosecution witness who retired from the SSS in 2008, told the court presided over by Justice Adamu Bello that in the course of investigations after Ashafa’s arrest, he (Ashafa) admitted that he was working for the Resident Chief of al-Qaeda in West Africa, Mallam Adnan Ibrahim, who he said was based in Kano.

Tarha added that Ashafa also confessed that he took some Nigerians for terrorism training in the Sahel Region.

The witness told the court that Ashafa was under his custody between 2005 and 2006 when he was head of the anti-terrorism department of the SSS, adding that the accused person was handed over to the Nigerian authorities by the Pakistani Government through the National Intelligence Agency.

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