The next time there is a handsomely-funded conference investigating “Islamophobia,” and learned analysts scratch their heads and wonder why anyone would possibly harbor any negative views of Islam, they should send a team to ask the relatives of Kabiru Sokoto’s 37 victims.
“Nigeria Boko Haram member jailed over Christmas bomb attack,” from Reuters, December 20 (thanks to Lookmann):
(Reuters) – A Nigerian court sentenced a member of Islamist group Boko Haram to life imprisonment on Friday for his involvement in bombings including a 2011 Christmas Day attack on a Catholic church near the capital that killed 37 people.
The militant group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the bombing of St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, on the outskirts of Abuja, which also wounded 57 in the deadliest of a series of attacks at Christmas.
Kabiru Sokoto was initially suspected of being the mastermind of the Christmas bomb, although the Federal High Court’s Justice Adeniyi Adetokunbo-Ademola found the prosecution had only proved that he knew it was going to happen and failed to disclose this to the authorities.
Ademola found him guilty however of being the mastermind of a bungled coordinated strike in the northwestern city of Sokoto in July the same year. Several bombs were planted by government buildings there, including next to the police headquarters, but were discovered before they were detonated.
He also noted that Sokoto was a member of an “illegal terrorist organization Boko Haram”. President Goodluck Jonathan declared the Islamist rebels — seen as the main security threat to Africa’s top oil producing nation — a terrorist group in June.
Boko Haram, like many hardline Islamist groups, sees Christians as infidels who must either convert or be crushed. A wave of attacks on churches two years ago seemed aimed at triggering a sectarian war in a country with the world’s largest mixed Muslim and Christian population….