Olayiwola Matthew
•Late Boko Haram Founder, Mohammed Yusuf
A young son of Boko Haram’s founder has been arrested in Chad, where he was allegedly leading a jihadist cell, according to both an intelligence source and a former insurgent.
Muslim Mohammed Yusuf was arrested alongside five other suspected members of the movement, which was founded in neighbouring Nigeria a few years before his birth by his father, radical preacher Mohammed Yusuf.
The Islamist group has sown terror around the Lake Chad region for around 15 years, and has mounted increasingly brazen attacks on villages and military bases in recent months, reports AFP.
Chadian police confirmed having arrested six Boko Haram members but could not say if one of them was the older Yusuf’s son.
A Nigerian intelligence source in the Lake Chad region told our correspondent at the weekend that they received a report of the arrest of a six-man jihadist cell in Chad.
“The team was headed by Muslim, the youngest son of the late Boko Haram founder,” said the source.
The source however said that the cell belonged to the Islamic State West Africa Province group, a rival offshoot which splintered off from Boko Haram over ideological disagreements.
The source added that Yusuf was an infant when his father was killed in 2009 during a military crackdown on Boko Haram that left some 800 people dead, giving his age as 18.
Photos that surfaced after the arrests in Chad, showed a young, short and slender man in a blue tracksuit — with a striking resemblance to Yusuf — standing next to far older men.
Yusuf, who goes by the alias Abdrahman Mahamat Abdoulaye, is the younger brother of ISWAP leader, Habib Yusuf, alias Abu Mus’ab Al-Barnawi.
A former lieutenant of Yusuf’s father, who has denounced Boko Haram but has knowledge of the group’s inner workings, also said Yusuf had been arrested.
“He and the team were arrested by Chadian security. They are six in number,” he said.
Chadian police said they had arrested “bandits who operate in the city… they are undocumented, they are members of Boko Haram”, police spokesman Paul Manga told our correspondent from N’djamena.
He said the cell was arrested “a few months ago.”