Nigeria police kill Islamist sect financier

KANO, Nigeria — Police said Sunday they had shot dead a man financing a radical Islamist sect in northern Nigeria and arrested another man suspected of supplying the group with arms.
The man financing the Bokom Haram sect, Alhaji Salisu Damaturu, was killed when a shootout broke out during a raid on one of the group's hideouts, Mohammed Jinjiri Abubakar, police commissioner for Borno State where the sect is based, told AFP.
He said Damaturu and another man had been fingered as financing the group by an arms dealer, Mohammed Zakaria, who was arrested in the town of Maiduguri on Saturday.
He said Zakaria admitted during interrogation to belonging to Bokom Haram and also to being the sect's arms supplier from the neighbouring countries of Chad and Cameroon.
"He fingered Alhaji Salisu Damaturu and Mohammed Goni as the group's financiers and also gave a description of the sect's enclave in the town," he said.
Abubakar said the police raided the hideout where they engaged some Islamists in a gun battle.
"Many sect members escaped through the fence but Damaturu was killed in the shootout," he said.
He said a cache of weapons was recovered from the hideout, including 12 rocket launchers, two pistols, one loaded AK-47 rifle, two detonating bomb cables and more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition.
"At the moment no arrest was made but we have launched a manhunt for the fleeing sect members," Abubakar said.
Nigerian police have recovered arms and ammunition during recent raids on the hideouts of the sect in Maiduguri and nearby Yobe state.
The Boko Haram sect launched an uprising in 2009 put down by a brutal military assault that left hundreds dead.
The radical sect has been blamed for a series of attacks and hit-and-run shootings in northern Nigeria in recent months that have left dozens dead.
Police say some of the killings may have been politically related ahead of April elections.

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Why do you have to kill in the name of religion!