A young son of Boko Haram’s late founder, Mohammed Yusuf, has reportedly been arrested in Chad, where he was allegedly leading a jihadist cell, according to AFP citing security and intelligence sources.
Boko Haram, founded by Mohammed Yusuf in northeastern Nigeria before his death in 2009, has terrorised the Lake Chad region for over 15 years, staging deadly raids on villages and military installations.
An intelligence source in the Lake Chad area told AFP that the detained cell reportedly belonged to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram offshoot that emerged following ideological divisions within the group.
“The team was headed by Muslim, the youngest son of the late Boko Haram founder,” the source disclosed, noting that Yusuf, now 18, was still an infant when his father was killed in a 2009 military crackdown that left about 800 people dead.
Photos obtained after the arrests showed a slender young man in a blue tracksuit, closely resembling Yusuf, standing alongside older suspects.
Yusuf, who reportedly uses the alias Abdrahman Mahamat Abdoulaye, is also the younger brother of ISWAP’s leader, Habib Yusuf, also known as Abu Mus’ab Al-Barnawi.
A former lieutenant of Mohammed Yusuf, who has since denounced Boko Haram, corroborated the arrest, saying: “He and the team were arrested by Chadian security. They are six in number.”
Chadian police spokesman Paul Manga described the detainees as “bandits who operate in the city… they are undocumented, they are members of Boko Haram.” He confirmed the arrests happened “a few months ago.”
