Al Qaeda suspects arrested in Nigeria: police (Al Qaida in Africa)

Reuters via Yahoo! News ^ | 2007 Nov 11

[Wiz]

LAGOS (Reuters) - A group of Islamist militants with suspected links to al Qaeda have been arrested in three states in northern Nigeria and explosives were seized from them, a spokesman for the State Security Services (SSS) said on Monday.

ADVERTISEMENT

The U.S. embassy warned in September that Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, was at risk of "terrorist attack," and Osama bin Laden once named the country as ripe for jihad, but Nigeria has yet to see any major attack in the style of al Qaeda.

"The service arrested some persons in Kaduna, Kano and Yobe states. Explosive-making devices were found," said SSS spokesman Ado Muazu. He could not say how many people were detained.

"Investigations have revealed that the suspects have links with the al Qaeda network and the Nigerian Taliban," he said.

He was referring to a group of radical Islamists who launched a brief spate of attacks in late 2003 on police stations and government offices in the predominantly Muslim northeast, prompting a fierce security crackdown. The group has no known connection to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Nigerian police and the secretive SSS have made sporadic arrests of suspected jihadists for some years and trials have been launched, but there has been no conviction and no conclusive evidence of al Qaeda's presence in Nigeria has been made public.

This Day newspaper published a photograph of three bags of fertilizer and a few sticks of dynamite which it said were seized from the detained group. Muazu said the photograph was genuine and further investigations were under way.

[Wiz]

It's good news the Al Qaida elements are captured, but it's bad news that Al Qaida is spreading outward, especially to one of the few friendly democratic country that provides energy resource to US.

[Wiz]

ping

[blam]

Bump.

[Red Badger]

Now I hope those damn e-mails will stop...........