Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau
Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau | credits: saharareporters.com
The United Nations Security Council has sanctioned Boko Haram leader,
Abubakar Shekau, and a splinter group, Ansaru on Wednesday. According to
Reuters, Shekau is the first individual while Ansaru is the first entity to be so sanctioned since the Islamist militant group was blacklisted.
With this sanction, Shekau and Ansaru will be banned from international
travel while their assets would be frozen under the UN al Qaeda
sanctions list.
Russia had placed a “technical hold” on the
designations two weeks ago because it needed more time to review the
listings, but diplomats said they lifted the hold on Wednesday, allowing
the sanctions to come into force.
Last month, the Security
Council al Qaeda Sanctions Committee blacklisted Boko Haram at the
request of Nigeria, following global outrage when the group kidnapped
more than 250 girls from the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno
State, on April 14.
The Islamist militant group was described
in the UN listing as an affiliate of al Qaeda and the Organisation of al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. It is subjected to a travel ban, an asset
freeze and an arms embargo.
Boko Haram faction Ansaru, blamed
for the killing of several Western hostages, is AQIM’s bona fide
affiliate in Nigeria, and called itself “al Qaeda in the Land Beyond the
Sahara” in a video with a British and Italian hostage in 2011.
Ansaru broke off from the Boko Haram sect in protest after it killed 186 mostly Muslim civilians in Kano in 2012.
Shekau is the purported leader of Boko Haram. A year ago, US Secretary
of State, John Kerry, authorised a reward of up to $7m for information
leading to his location.
Boko Haram’s five-year-old insurgency
is aimed at reviving a medieval Islamic caliphate in modern Nigeria,
whose 170 million people are split about evenly between Christians and
Muslims. The group is becoming, by far, the biggest security threat to
Africa’s top oil producer.
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