The Islamist sect, Boko Haram yesterday threatened fresh attacks on the media in
Nigeria, including foreign agencies, and journalists in an 18-minute video
posted on YouTube. The video also showed how a suicide bomber drove into ThisDay
Newspaper office in Abuja and blew himself up, an attack, which claimed at least
three lives last week.Besides major Nigerian newspapers, the Boko Haram
said it would attack the Hausa language services of Voice of America (VOA) and
Radio France International (RFI) An unnamed male speaker also threatened new
attacks against Federal Government, saying security forces continue to hold the
wives and children of its followers hostage.“If they destroy one brick
from our building, we will destroy 500 from theirs,” the man said in Hausa. The
video shows the suicide bomber drove a Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) on April 26
into the Abuja offices of ThisDay. As a man softly prays, the car blows up,
sending a massive fireball into the air.The attack killed at least three
people at the offices in Nigeria’s capital. A separate bombing at offices the
newspaper shared with other publications in the city of Kaduna killed at least
four people. In the video, a narrator blamed ThisDay for publishing inaccurate
and biased information about the sect. In particular, the man mentions a 2002
article published by ThisDay, suggesting the Prophet Muhammad would have married
a Miss World pageant contestant.The video also showed the photograph of
the reporter who wrote the article, which sparked riots in Kaduna that killed
dozens.
“The punishment for that is the person should be killed, especially
when you’re talking about Prophet Muhammad,” the man said. The reporter who
wrote the article later fled Nigeria for Europe.The narrator also warns
other Nigerian newspapers that they would be attacked for their reporting, as
well as the local services of VOA and RFI. Both the VOA and RFI broadcast via
shortwave radio across Nigeria’s Muslim North.David Borgida, a VOA spokesman
based in Washington, declined to comment on the specific threat posed by Boko
Haram, but said the broadcaster “takes the safety of all its journalists very
seriously.” Officials at RFI could not be immediately reached for comment
yesterday.The video showed a new sophistication of the sect. Past videos
have simply shown the sect’s leader Sheik Abubakar Shekau talking. Tuesday’s
video included images from an attack for the first time, as well as using
another speaker besides Shekau to spread the sect’s message.
It also
reemphasizes the threat the sect poses to journalists in Nigeria, a country of
more than 160 million people largely divided into a Christian, South and a
Muslim North. The sect previously killed two journalists. “All these news
agencies, God willing, we find their office, we’re going to attack,” the
narrator said. “Anything that has to do with them, even their office, their
workers.”
