Nigeria police kill Islamist sect financier

Telegraph (UK)

27 Feb 2011

Nigeria police kill Islamist sect financier

Police in Nigeria shot dead a man who was financing a radical Islamist sect in northern Nigeria and arrested another man suspected of supplying the group with arms.

Members of the Boko Haram sect lie on the ground after their arrest in Bauchi back in 2009. The Boko Haram sect launched an uprising in 2009 put down by a brutal military assault that left hundreds dead Photo: REUTERS6:54PM GMT 27 Feb 2011 Alhaji Salisu Damaturu, was killed when a shoot-out broke out during a raid on one of the group's hideouts

Damaturu and another man had been named as financing the Boko Haram sect by an arms dealer, Mohammed Zakaria, who was arrested in the town of Maiduguri on Saturday.

"He fingered Alhaji Salisu Damaturu and Mohammed Goni as the group's financiers and also gave a description of the sect's enclave in the town," said Mohammed Jinjiri Abubakar, police commissioner for Borno State where the sect is based.

"Many sect members escaped through the fence but Damaturu was killed in the shoot-out," he said.

He said a cache of weapons was recovered from the hideout, including 12 rocket launchers, two pistols, one loaded AK-47 rifle, two detonating bomb cables and more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition.