FaithWorld

(A victim lies on the ground after a bomb attack in Abuja in this December 25, 2011 still image taken from video. Islamist militant group Boko Haram said it planted bombs that exploded on Christmas Day at churches in Nigeria, one of which killed at least 27 people on the outskirts of the capital. REUTERS/via Reuters TV)

The leader of Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram said recent killings of Christians were justifiable revenge attacks and President Goodluck Jonathan had no power to stop the group’s insurgency, in the first video of him posted online. The 15 minute video of Abubakar Shekau posted on YouTube is similar in style to messages submitted by other Islamist groups like al Qaeda, a sign of the growing influence other jihadist movements are having on the sect.

Boko Haram, whose name translates from the northern Hausa language as “Western education is sinful”, has been behind almost daily killings in its home base in the largely Muslim northeast, most recently targeting Christians.

“Christians, everyone knows what they have done to us and Muslims … we were attacked and we decided to defend ourselves and, because we were on the right path, Allah has made us stronger,” Shekau says in Hausa, sat in front of two Kalashnikov rifles and wearing a camouflage bullet proof jacket.

“Jonathan, (you) know full well that this thing is beyond your powers,” he added, referring to the president.

Read the full story by Joe Brock here. Watch the video on YouTube here (in Hausa, with an explanation of his statement below).
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