Boko Haram "claims" Abu Qaqa Is Alive, Threatens Attack on Wives of Government Officials

Abubakar Shekau, Leader of Islamic insurgent group, Jama’atu ahlis sunnah lil daawati wal jihad, popularly known as Boko Haram has denied claims by Nigerian security operatives that spokesman of the dreaded Boko Haram sect, Abu Qaqa was killed in an attack on Mariri neighbourhood of Kano. In an Hausa language video by its leader, Abubakar Shekau, posted on YouTube, the group admitted to the killing of many of its members, but claimed the group’s leadership is still intact. “The most bogus of these claims is that the leadership of our group has been decimated or arrested,” Mr. Shekau states while laughing. “It is probably the leadership of the rogue group that they killed which they created in the first place.” The Joint Task Force had a few weeks ago declared that a combined team of Nigerian troops from the 3 Brigade Nigerian Army base and Directorate of State Security personnel intercepted a Honda "Hennesy" salon car, with Abuja registration number ABJ 620 AE, conveying Abu Qaqa, the sect’s spokesman, two top commanders with a woman and three kids. According to spokesman for the Joint Task Force in Kano, Ikediche Iweha, security operatives opened fire on the car when it refused orders to stop for a search, killing the spokesman, while the top commanders were arrested, but this has been countered by the group as false. In the Video, Mr. Shekau also accused the security operatives of targeting female members of the sect. He alleged that the women are tortured after incarceration by security agencies. “As at Saturday when I made this video, between 7 and 10 of them (women) have been incarcerated,” Mr. Shekau said. “We don’t know where they are kept or what they are doing to them.” “But as Muslims, we know what unbelievers do to women …Now, married women are victims of State terror,” he added. The Boko Haram leader said his group would retaliate by focusing its attack on women related to security and state officials. It cannot be immediately verified if the supposedly killed Abu Qaqa was the one denying his death, but similar claims in the past may cast doubt to the actual death of the sect spokesman.