The Department of State Service, DSS, has arrested a graduate of the Ahmadu Bello University, one Yasir Salihu and six other Boko Haram members for the killing of an Islamic cleric, Sheik Adam Albani, his wife and son, on February 1st in Zaria, Kaduna.
The suspects paraded by the SSS in Abuja yesterday told newsmen that they assassinated the cleric because he offered information on them and their activities to the Kaduna State officials.
Deputy Director of the DSS, Marilyn Ogar, said, “Investigation and confessions by suspects revealed that Albani’s pro-western posture and his preaching are contrary to the Boko Haram ideology. It was this hatred that culminated in a meeting by members of the sect, under the leadership of Yakub Abdullahi at Hayin Danmani in Rigasa area of Kaduna, where Abdullahi declared that the Shura Council, the highest decision making body, had ordered the killing of Albani.
“Consequently, on 23rd January, 2014, an attempt to strike at the cleric failed, as he was said to have traveled. He was subsequently placed on surveillance, and on 1 st February 2014 he was tracked by members of the Boko Haram sect to Markaz Salafiya Centre, where they waited for him till the end of the programme, trailed him and eventually murdered him, his wife and son, while other occupants of the vehicle sustained varying degrees of injuries.”
Ogar said one of the suspects, Abdullahi, 42 was the regional commander of the sect for Kaduna and Niger and that he was actively involved in the Borno insurrection of 2009.
“He is the arrowhead of Sheik Albani’s killing, as he not only directed the assassination plot, but procured the two AK47 rifles used,” she said.
Yasir, the ABU Zaria graduate is said to be an employee of Horizons Medical Centre, Wuse Zone 6, Abuja who joined Boko Haram in 2009 after he attended a sermon by the late Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf.