Nigeria Muslim Cleric Hate
Muslim cleric sentenced to death
11/10/2006 - (SA)
Kano - A high court in northern Nigeria's Adamawa state on Tuesday sentenced a leader of an unorthodox and militant Islamic sect on the run for 22 years to death by hanging, said reports.
Musa Ali Suleiman, 51, was found guilty of three charges of murder, conspiracy and incitement of public disturbance, said reports.
The presiding judge Bamari Bansi, who was also the state's chief judge, ordered that Suleiman be hanged on the first charge of murder and sentenced him to 21 years in prison and 12 strokes of the cane as well fining him $770 for incitement.
According to reports, he also received a six months jail term for criminal conspiracy.
2 000 people killed
Suleiman led followers of his heretic Maitatsine Islamic sect in bloody intra-religious violence in 1984 in the state capital, Yola, which led to the deaths of 2 000 people and large-scale destruction of property.
The group believed only in the Qur'an, rejected all aspects of Islamic theology and was opposed to modernity. They branded other Muslims as infidels who must be converted through violence.
As well as in Yola, there were similar outbreaks of strife in Kano and Maiduguri, but the leaders of the sect in these two cities were killed in a military crackdown.
Suleiman managed to escape and was on the run until March 2004 when he was arrested in Abuja before being transferred to Yola.
He rejected the judgment through his lawyer, Innocent Daagba, and declared his intention to appeal the sentence.
Nigerian Muslim cleric detained over al Qaeda case
Thu 8 Feb 2007
MAIDUGURI,
Nigeria, Feb 8 (Reuters) - A Muslim cleric has been detained in northeastern
Nigeria in connection with a man accused of taking $300,000 from al Qaeda to
assist a group called the Nigerian Taliban, officials said on Thursday.
The cleric, Mohammed Yusuf, is a well-known preacher in Maiduguri, capital of
Borno state in the country's Muslim-dominated north. Police fanned out in the
area around the mosque where he usually preaches as news of his detention
filtered out.
"Yusuf is with us and we are taking him to Abuja for a chat. He's already
cooperating," said Ruben Amawo, director of the State Security Services, the
secret police, in Borno state.
He said Yusuf was a close associate of Muhammed Damagun, a media company
director whom prosecutors last month accused of taking money from al Qaeda in
2002 to arrange combat training in Mauritania for 17 members of the Nigerian
Taliban.
The case relates to a short-lived spate of attacks in 2003 and 2004 by the
self-styled Taliban, a group of reclusive Islamists in the far north of Nigeria
with no known connection to the Afghan Taliban.
Yusuf, who often includes anti-Western sentiment in his sermons, was known at
the time as a sympathiser of the mysterious group.
The Taliban launched a series of armed attacks on police stations and government
offices in Borno and neighbouring Yobe, prompting a fierce military crackdown in
which at least 20 people were killed and several others captured.
The group, who said they were fighting for an Islamic state in Africa's top oil
producing country, have hardly been heard of since then.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is split about evenly between Muslims
and Christians. The northern half of the country is predominantly Muslim
although significant Christian minorities live there.
The two major religions coexist peacefully most of the time although
inter-religious violence sometimes breaks out. These conflicts are often
intertwined with land, ethnic and political disputes.
Muslim mobs killed about 50 Christians in Maiduguri a year ago in riots sparked
by a controversial public hearing over a plan to extend the president's tenure.
About 100 Muslims died in reprisal killings in the southern city of Onitsha.