The leader of the radical Islamist group
Boko Haram has rejected the idea of any
potential amnesty deal, which the
country's presidency said it would study in
a bid to curb a bloody insurgency, in a
statement obtained by AFP Thursday.
Abubakar Shekau, the purported head of
Boko Haram who has been designated a
global terrorist by the United States, claimed
his group had "not committed any wrong to
deserve amnesty."
"Surprisingly, the Nigerian government is
talking about granting us amnesty. What
wrong have we done? On the contrary, it is
we that should grant you pardon," he said,
listing what he described as the state's
"atrocities" against Muslims.
The Hausa language audio recording was
distributed by email in a manner consistent
with previous Boko Haram messages, and
the voice was similar to that of previous
Shekau statements.
President Goodluck Jonathan last week
formed a panel to look at the possibility of
offering an amnesty deal to the Islamists,
whose insurgency has left more than 3,000
people dead since 2009, including killings by
the security services.
Jonathan has come under intense pressure
over the issue, with politicians from the
country's violence-torn north as well as
Nigeria's highest Muslim spiritual figure, the
Sultan of Sokoto, calling for amnesty.
The panel, reportedly to be composed of
national security officials, northern leaders
and others, is due to report later this month.
The move has been widely debated in
Nigerian media in recent days.
Boko Haram has claimed to be fighting for
an Islamic state in Africa's most populous
nation and largest oil producer.
The group also claimed the February 19
kidnapping of a French family of seven over
the border in Cameroon. Their whereabouts
remain unknown.
Boko Haram's demands however have
repeatedly shifted and the group is believed
to include various factions in addition to
imitators.
Nigeria offered an amnesty to militants in
the southern oil-producing Niger Delta
region in 2009, which has been credited
with greatly reducing unrest there, though
oil theft has since flourished.
Violence blamed on Boko Haram has been
concentrated in the mostly Muslim north.
Christian and Muslim civilians, the security
services and other symbols of authority have
been among the group's victims.

if that's the case then they should be wiped out. Nigeria has harboured those religious extremist for a very long time and now ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!

Leaked report: Nearly half of US drone strikes in Pakistan not against al-Qaeda
A trove of leaked classified reports has confirmed what many had suspected – US drone kills in Pakistan are not the precision strikes against top-level al-Qaeda terrorists they are portrayed as by the Obama administration.

Instead, many of the attacks are aimed at suspected low-level tribal militants, who may pose no direct danger to the United States – and for many there appears to be little evidence to justify the assassinations.

Top secret documents obtained by McClatchy newspapers in the US show the locations, identities and numbers of those attacked and killed in Pakistan in 2006-8 and 2010-11, as well as explanations for why the targets were picked.

The statistics illustrate the breadth of the US ‘drone doctrine’ – which has never been defined by consecutive US administrations. Between 1,990 and 3,308 people are reported to have been killed in the drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, the vast majority of them during the Obama terms.

In the 12-month period up to 2011, 43 out of 95 drone strikes in the reports (which give an account of the vast majority of US operations in the country) were not aimed at al-Qaeda at all. And 265 out of 482 people killed in those assassinations, were defined internally as “extremists”.

Indeed, only six of the men killed – less than two percent – were senior al-Qaeda leaders.

These “signatures” apparently include such suspicious behavior as taking part in a funeral procession or first responding to an initial drone strike. Last year, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, said it’s believed that, “since President Obama took office, at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners.”

The US has previously refused to admit that it operates such a policy.

Some of the assassinations, such as that of, Mohammad, the younger brother of the leader of the Haqqani network, Badruddin, appear to have been simply errors, with the victims branded as terrorists only after the fact.

All this seems to go against the assurance of John Brennan, the former White House counterterrorism chief, and new CIA head, who is the mastermind behind the drone policy

“We only authorize a particular operation against a specific individual if we have a high degree of confidence that the individual being targeted is indeed the terrorist we are pursuing,” Brennan explained a year ago.