Various news agencies are now confirming the death of Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram. Mohammed Yusuf had been captured earlier in the day from a house in the northeastern city of Maiduguri in the Nigerian province of Borno following days of deadly clashes across much of northern Nigeria between his followers and security forces that left a death toll numbering in the hundreds.

From Agence France Presse:

“Mohammed Yusuf was killed by security forces in a shootout while trying to escape,” Moses Anegbode, police Assistant Inspector-General for the northeastern Nigeria told BRTV state television.

“I can confirm that has been killed and the body is with us,” he said.

An AFP journalist saw his naked, bullet-riddled body lying on the grounds of the police headquarters among two dozen others brought in earlier from parts of the city.

Earlier a policeman told AFP Yusuf had “pleaded for mercy and forgiveness before he was shot.”

State television footage shown earlier to officials and journalists at a government office showed jubilant police celebrating around the body.

Nigerian forces on Thursday put the extremists to flight after an all-out assault on their northern stronghold to crush the rebellion.

Troops raided the Islamists headquarters in the northern city of Maiduguri, killing some 200 followers of the self-styled Taliban sect including its deputy leader.

“The leader of the Taliban had been captured by the military who raided a house where he was hiding, close to his former residence that was destroyed” an army officer had told reporters in the Borno state capital earlier Thursday.

The incident does not speak well of Nigerian authorities. How does one of the most wanted individuals in Nigeria once captured attempt to escape mere hours later? Instead of celebrating the capture of a sinister individual who led a bizarre sect that preached ignorance and hate, we are now left with questions. How did he escape? Was he allowed to escape so he could be shot? If was he unarmed, why is his corpse riddled with bullets? Nigerian Islamists now have a martyr.

The shelling of Maiduguri, a city of over a million and the provincial capital, is also troubling. Troops shelled the extremist sect’s base in Maiduguri throughout the night, then gunned down followers as they tried to flee in the morning, witnesses and security sources said. Yusuf’s deputy, Abubakar Shekau was killed along with 200 followers “while trying to escape,” from a district of Maiduguri, police officer said earlier.

An AFP reporter saw dozens of bodies strewn on the grounds leading to Bayan Quarters, the Boko Haram headquarters and the epicentre of bloodbath. A source at a Maiduguri hospital said “the corpses are countless.”

President Umaru Yar’Adua had ordered the raid to crush Boko Haram “once and for all.” This contradicts his earlier directive that “no effort should be spared in identifying, arresting and prosecuting leaders and members of the sects involved in the attacks.” Instead we have two bloodbaths, the first by Boko Haram and second by the Nigerian authorities.

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A number of former Guantánamo Bay detainees have joined together to open a centre in London for former and current prisoners. The Guantánamo Justice Centre aims to help more than 500 men get medical and psychological treatment, and find jobs. Nazanine Moshiri reports from London.

A related story on Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantánamo detainee, from the BBC:

A former detainee of Guantanamo Bay who is taking legal action against the British authorities says he is not doing it to win compensation.

Speaking in public for the first time since his return from Guantanamo, Binyam Mohamed asked: “How much money can you give me that would make me forget the seven years I have gone through?”

He was appearing at the launch of the Guantanamo Justice Centre, set up by former detainees at the US military facility to help others released from the camp.

The Metropolitan Police are investigating whether to bring charges against British officials who, it is alleged, colluded in Mr Mohamed’s mistreatment in US custody.

Mr Mohamed told the public meeting of his difficulties in readjusting to life after Guantanamo.

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The TJRC choice brings the whole process full circle. National healing and reconciliation has been overshadowed by talk of the Hague and a local tribunal. NTV’s Jane Kiyo traces the key moments along the bumpy road that Kenya has traveled as it seeks to reconcile itself with that bitter episode of post election violence. More from All Africa:

Kenya ministers are holding a meeting of the cabinet to discuss the legislation for setting up a local tribunal and the explosive Mau issue.

The meeting, chaired by President Kibaki, started at 10.00am and a final decision on whether to try post- election violence suspects in Kenya or refer the matter to the International Criminal Court is expected.

The Cabinet is holding its meeting at a time when it is sharply divided over handling of squatters at Mau Forest Complex and perpetrators of last year’s post-election violence.

On Wednesday, Justice National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs minister Mutula Kilonzo said no changes had been made to the Bill presented to the Cabinet last week.

A proposal to give immunity to the President from prosecution and to allow the Attorney General to terminate a case has been opposed by some members.

However, Mr Kilonzo has insisted the Bill met international standards and promised to re-table it in the Cabinet without changes.

The local trial is meant to enable Kenya avoid an international trial which could portray the country as a failed state.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) is poised to step in if the coalition government does not create its own court to try those accused of causing the violence that killed at least 1,300 people and uprooted more than 300,000.

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The Pakistani Air Force, by improving its ability to pinpoint strikes in battles with militant forces, has intensified its effort to attack Taliban targets inside Pakistan. More at the New York Times:

Pakistan’s Air Force is improving its ability to pinpoint and attack militant targets with precision weapons, adding a new dimension to the country’s fight against violent extremism, according to Pakistani military officials and independent analysts.

The Pakistani military has moved away from the scorched-earth artillery and air tactics used last year against insurgents in the Bajaur tribal agency. In recent months, the air force has shifted from using Google Earth to sophisticated images from spy planes and other surveillance aircraft, and has increased its use of laser-guided bombs.

The changes reflect an effort by the Pakistani military to conduct its operations in a way that will not further alienate the population by increasing civilian casualties and destroying property. But they are also dictated by necessity as the military takes its campaign into areas where it is reluctant to commit ground troops, particularly in the rugged terrain of Waziristan, where it had suffered heavy losses.

Military analysts say the airstrikes alone cannot ultimately substitute for ground forces or for better counterinsurgency training. But they say the airstrikes have become a valuable tool for Pakistan in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in sometimes inaccessible terrain.

Since May, F-16 multirole fighter jets have flown more than 300 combat missions against militants in the Swat Valley and more than 100 missions in South Waziristan, attacking mountain hide-outs, training centers and ammunition depots, Pakistani military officials said.

In conjunction with infantry fire, artillery barrages and helicopter gunship attacks, military officials say, the air combat missions reinvigorated the military campaign in Swat and have put increasing pressure on the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, in South Waziristan.

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Nigerian security forces say they have captured Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of Boko Haram, the Islamist group blamed for the deadly violence that has left hundreds in the north of the country. Mohammed Yusuf was detained in the northeastern state of Borno. The story from Al Jazeera:

Nigerian security forces say they have captured the leader of Boko Haram, the group blamed for the deadly violence in the north of the country.

“Mohammed Yusuf has been arrested. He is now at the Giwa barracks,” Christopher Dega, the police commissioner of Borno state, told reporters on Thursday.

Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege, reporting from Borno state in northern Nigeria, said: “We can’t be 100 per cent sure that the man that Nigerian forces say they’ve captured is indeed the leader of Boko Haram because throughout Thursday, Nigerian security forces were telling us that Boko Haram’s leader, Mohammed Yussef, and at least 300 fighters had fled a complex that was under fire.”

“There was serious gunfire between Nigerian security forces and followers of Mohammed Youssef,” she said.

“Now we’re hearing this news that he has indeed been taken by police and incarcerated, and we are trying to get the Nigerian security forces to show us evidence that he is behind bars.”

News of the capture came after the group’s deputy leader was reportedly among dozens of people killed after troops had shelled their base in the city of Maiduguri.

Security forces were said to be hunting door-to-door for Boko Haram members.

The government warned people to evacuate the area, then shelled and stormed the group’s mosque and headquarters on Wednesday night.

A firefight ensued with retreating Boko Haram members armed with homemade hunting rifles, firebombs, bows and arrows, machetes and scimitars.

A reporter for the Associated Press news agency saw soldiers shoot their way into the mosque and then open fire on those inside.

The reporter later counted about 50 bodies inside the building and another 50 in the courtyard outside.

Our correspondent said there has been a “reduction in some of the fighting and that’s because the Nigerian security forces have been able to flush out some Boko Haram members”.

“It now appears many of the Boko Haram members have fled the scene, but there has been more violence in another state – Kano state – not far from Borno state, where we understand that security forces bulldozed a mosque and a house where the alleged leader was living,” she said.

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“Svetlana’s”, journey, like hundreds of others, began in Central Asia where she was duped by the promise of a legitimate job in Dubai. Instead her identity was stolen and she was passed from one gang to another. She ended up being held against her will servicing men for up to 12 hours a day.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford has “Svetlana’s” story.

Trafficking involves transporting peope away from the communities in which they live and forcing them to work against their will using violence, deception or coercion. When children are trafficked, no violence, deception or coercion needs to be involved: simply transporting them into exploitative conditions constitutes trafficking. People are trafficked both between countries and within the borders of a state.

Trafficking affects countries and families on every continent. Because of its hidden nature, it is difficult to get accurate statistics on the numbers affected, but the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that at any one time there are some 2.5 million people who have been trafficked and are being subjected to sexual or labour exploitation.

Most coverage of the trafficking issue has focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation, but around a third of all trafficked people are used exclusively for labour exploitation (for example, domestic work, agricultural work, catering or packing and processing). It is a worldwide problem. It occurs within countries but has increasingly become a transnational problem with people being ferried across international borders illegally.

Trafficking for sexual exploitation almost exclusively affects women and girls (98 percent), but trafficking for labour exploitation also affects women more than men (56 percent being women and girls).

Learn more from Anti-Slavery International.

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How deep is the religious and political friction in the country and what does the future hold for Nigeria? Can there be a secular solution to a sectarian crisis?

The latest from All Africa:

43 members of Boko Haram, the radical anti-western education Islamic sect were killed in a gun duel with security forces in Yobe state, yesterday, as a manhunt for the sect’s leaders intensifies.

Some 180 women and children were also freed in Bauchi while Kano State government agency has demolished the sect leader’s house and the mosque attached to it in Kano.

A police source said the killings happened in Hawan Malka, an area on the outskirts of Potiskum, Yobe’s second largest city.

The clash came as Nigerian soldiers patrolled the northern city of Maiduguri yesterday searching for the remaining members of Boko Haram. Nearly 300 people have been killed since the crackdown, which included the shelling of a compound believed to be home to sect leader Mohammed Yusuf.

The attack destroyed buildings including a small mosque, although the preacher’s whereabouts remain unknown. Yusuf’s supporters – armed with machetes, knives, home-made rifles and petrol bombs – have attacked churches, police stations, prisons and government buildings in parts of the mostly Muslim north.

Police in Maiduguri have said 90 rioters have been killed, as well as eight police officers, three prison officials and two soldiers.

Police in Sokoto state in the north west also arrested five members of Boko Haram — which means ‘Western education is a sin’ — including former university lecturer Kadiru Atiku, believed to be the group’s local leader.

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Deep inside Perú’s Apurimac and Ene River Valley lies the world’s single largest field for coca leaf and coca paste production. A recent report released by drug-trafficking specialist Jamie Antezana concluded that the production of illegal narcotics in Perú had reached alarming levels and was spreading to unimaginable regions. In his report, Antezana affirms that the Andean country has gone from being a nation that produces pure cocaine to a country that produces and exports the illegal substance.

One of the most surprising facts in Antezana’s report The new face of drug-trafficking in Perú is evidence that the cultivation of the coca leaf has gone up in thirteen areas in Perú, accordinng to Lima’s El Comercio.

Production has not only gone up in infamous areas such as the Apurímac and Ene River Valley but also in areas such as Ucayali, Cusco, Puno, Pasco, Áncash, Amazonas, Cajamarca, Loreto and La Libertad. Furthermore, the report showed that efforts to get rid of coca production were only taking place in three of Perú’s regions.

The cocaine trade is helping to revive an old nemesis, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso. More on this side of the story from the New York Times:

First the soldiers came to Río Seco, a coca-growing village in the lush mountain jungles of southern Perú. “They called us subversives and they opened fire,” said Benedicto Cóndor, 55, a coca farmer. They shot dead four people at close range, including a woman who was five months pregnant, witnesses said. Two children, ages 6 and 1, disappeared and are believed dead.

Four months later, the guerrillas arrived, accusing the villagers of helping the military. They abducted the village leader, who has not been seen since.

The harrowing tales of violence trickling out of the jungle as dozens of families have fled their villages in recent months raise an ominous specter: a brutal war that terrorized the country for two decades may be sparking back to life.

The war against the Shining Path rebels, which took nearly 70,000 lives, supposedly ended in 2000.

But here in one of the most remote corners of the Andes, the military, in a renewed campaign, is battling a resurgent rebel faction. And the Shining Path, taking a page from Colombia’s rebels, has reinvented itself as an illicit drug enterprise, rebuilding on the profits of Perú’s thriving cocaine trade.

The front lines lie in the drizzle-shrouded jungle of Vizcatán, a 250-square-mile region in the Apurímac and Ene River Valley. The region is Perú’s largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

As the military and the rebels skirmish for control of isolated coca-producing hamlets, the reports of rising body counts and civilians killed in the cross-fire, still far lower than the carnage at the height of the Shining Path war in the 1980s and early 90s, are rousing ghosts most Peruvians thought were long dead.

“The soldiers think we are all terrorists, and with that idea they believe they can destroy anything that moves,” said Alfredo Pacheco, 45, a coca farmer who fled his village, Nueva Esperanza, in September, after soldiers burned the mud huts there in pursuit of the rebels.

Military officials contended that the huts were coca-leaf maceration pits and cocaine labs.

Such conflicting views are practically built into the system. Coca, the mildly stimulating leaf chewed raw here since before the Spanish conquest, is largely legal; cocaine is not.

Coca, a hallowed symbol of indigenous pride, is ubiquitous here. Qatun Tarpuy, a pro-coca political party, paints images of it on mud huts. Women harvest coca in clearings along the winding dirt road, and children dry the leaves in the sun.

It is also nearly impossible to find a coca farmer here who admits that his crops are sold for anything other than traditional use, but somehow, studies have found, as much as 90 percent of the coca goes to produce cocaine.

In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, coca cultivation in Perú increased by 4 percent, reaching the highest level in a decade, according to the United Nations. At the same time, Perú’s estimated cocaine production rose to a 10-year high of about 290 tons, second only to that of Colombia.

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Latin America has historically been a region where empires have collided. After decades that have seen numerous violent revolutions, military coups, the emergence and establishment of Bolivarian Socialism and more recently, catastrophic economic collapse, a new Latin America is now emerging.
The recent political and social confrontations occurring in places such as Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and Honduras are re-shaping the continent as countries question old alliances and make new alignments.

The US has long exerted political and military influence in the region but with a succession of elected leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa rejecting such influence a new era of US-Latin American relations is emerging.

Upon his election as US president, Barack Obama promised closer cooperation with regional neighbours, including efforts to improve relations with Communist Cuba.

In this month’s Empire Marwan Bishara and his guests examine the state of North-South relations in the hemisphere, question the extent and potential impact of the change promised by Obama, analyse the alternative political model posed by Hugo Chavez and ask whether President Lula da Silva of Brazil is now another counter-point for the region.

In a special interview Professor Noam Chomsky discusses US-Latin America relations and the repercussions of the crisis in Honduras. Other guests include Dr Celia Szusterman of Chatham House, Dr Andres Mejia Acosta of the Institute for Development Studies, and Professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger of Harvard and former Minister of Strategic Affairs for Brazil.

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