Chad executes B’Haram members

A Nigerian was among 10 members of Boko Haram executed by firing squad on Saturday in Chad, after being found guilty of killing 38 people in the country.

The Nigerian, Mahamat Mustapha, also known as Bana Fanaye, according to Chadian authorities, masterminded the June 15 suicide attacks that struck a school and a police building in N’Djamena, killing 38 people and injuring 101.

“They were executed this morning (Saturday) on a shooting ground north of N’Djamena,” a judicial source told Agence France-Presse. The report was confirmed by a security source who asked not to be identified.

The 10 were condemned to death on Friday in the country’s first trial of presumed members of the Islamist group. The hearings opened on Wednesday.

The defendants were accused of criminal conspiracy, killings, “wilful destruction with explosives, fraud, illegal possessions of arms and ammunition, as well as using psychotropic substances.”

Following Mustapha’s capture in June, Chad’s top prosecutor, Alghassim Kassim, said the suspect was the “ringleader of a network smuggling weapons and munitions between Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad”.

Meanwhile, a statement by a spokesperson for the Department of State Services, Tony Opuiyo, on saturday, said the agency disrupted a spying network mounted by Boko Haram terrorists at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.