Now wait a minute. Has John Kerry been told about this? Doesn’t Abubakar Shekau realize that what he is doing is “extremism” that has nothing to do with the Qur’an or Allah? Where are the moderate Western Muslims who are traveling to Nigeria to set Shekau straight about Islam? I am sure they will arrive in Kano any day now.
“Boko Haram leader dismisses claims of his death in new video,” by Aminu Abubakar, AFP, October 2, 2014:
Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) – Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau dismissed Nigerian military claims of his death in a new video obtained by AFP on Thursday and said the militants had implemented strict Islamic law in captured towns.
“Here I am, alive. I will only die the day Allah takes my breath,” Shekau said, adding that his group was “running our… Islamic caliphate” and administering strict sharia punishments.
Boko Haram has shown images of extreme violence before but the latest video shows at length graphic scenes of an amputation and a stoning to death as well as a beheading.
It also purports to show the wreckage of a Nigerian Air Force jet that went missing in the northeast on September 11. Boko Haram said its fighters shot it down but the military denied the claim.
The military announced last week that Shekau was dead and that a man who had been posing as the group’s leader in the videos had been killed after fighting with troops in the far northeast.
Security analysts and the United States questioned the credibility of the military’s claim.
The new 36-minute video shows Shekau, in combat fatigues and black rubber boots, standing on the back of a pick-up truck and firing an anti-aircraft gun into the air.
Standing in front of three camouflaged vans and flanked by four heavily armed, masked fighters, he then speaks for 16 minutes in Arabic and the Hausa language widely spoken in northern Nigeria.
There was no indication of where or when the video was shot. Shekau appears in separate images from the violence.
– Propaganda claims –
The heavily bearded Shekau, who appeared to be the same man as those in previous clips, said the military’s claim that he was dead was propaganda.
“Nothing will kill me until my days are over… Some people asked you if Shekau has two souls. No, I have one soul, by Allah,” he said, apparently reading from a script.
There have been two previous claims by Nigeria that Shekau had been killed or “may be dead” but Boko Haram later issued video denials.
Elsewhere in the new video, the militant leader said the group had implemented strict Islamic law in the towns that it had captured in the northeast in recent weeks.
“We are running our caliphate, our Islamic caliphate. We follow the Koran…in the land of Allah,” he said….