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Al-Qaeda 'funds' terror training
17/01/2007 08:25 - (SA)
Abuja - Prosecutors charged a Nigerian man on Tuesday with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from al-Qaieda and using the funds to send young men off for a terrorism training elsewhere in West Africa.
State prosecutor Abdullahi Mukaillu told a federal court in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, that 50-year old Mohammed Damagun received $300 000 in a London bank in late 2002.
The prosecutor said Damagun used the funds last year to sponsor a trip for 17 youths from Nigeria's Muslim north to the Arab-dominated nation of Mauritania, where they were to learn terror tactics.
According to the prosecutor, Damagun, who lived in Abuja, sought "to facilitate the spread of extremism and various acts and techniques on terrorism".
Damagun deny the charges
Damagun, who faced at least 15 years in prison if found guilty, denied the charges, which included accusations that he belonged to a banned Islamic group in Nigeria. Court was adjourned for further investigation.
Damagun was an executive for a Nigerian media company that published a newspaper considered critical of Nigeria's government and ruling party.
Mauritanian government officials weren't immediately available for comment. Mauritania - thousands of kilometres west from Nigeria along the strip of land just below the Sahara Desert - had battled militants of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Algerian insurgent group allied with al-Qaeda.
Osama Bin Laden in 2003 identified Nigeria, with 140 million people largely split between a predominantly Muslim north and a Christian-majority south, as a target for liberation.
Muslim, Christian servants 'work together'
Nigeria's federal government was staunchly secular and despite occasional flare-ups of religious and sectarian violence, Muslim and Christian civil servants worked together at all levels.
The president was Christian, yet 12 of Nigeria's 36 states adhered to Islamic law, or Shariah, but court-ordered amputations or executions were rarely carried out.
Fundamentalism, though, was not unheard of in northern Nigeria.
Nigeria was considered a close ally of the United States, which received about 12% of its crude oil from Nigeria, Africa's largest petroleum producer.
The opening of the case on Tuesday against Damagun wasn't the first government charge of al-Qaeda meddling in Nigeria.
Last month, 40-year-old Mohammed Ashafa, a Muslim from the northern city of Kano, received $1 500 from two Pakistanis believed to be al-Qaeda operatives "to identify and carry out terrorist attacks" on the homes of American living in Nigeria.
Ashafa was also charged with funding 21 foreign fighters to receive training from an Algerian terror network. He also faced at least 15 years in jail if convicted.
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