igeria sect leader defends killings inideo

ABUJA (Reuters) - The leader of
Nigerian Islamist sect Boko
Haram said recent killings of
Christians were justifiable
revenge attacks and President
Goodluck Jonathan had no
power to stop the group's
insurgency, in the first video of him posted online.
The 15 minute video of Abubakar Shekau posted on
YouTube is similar in style to messages submitted by
other Islamist groups like al Qaeda, a sign of the
growing influence other jihadist movements are
having on the sect.
Boko Haram, whose name translates from the
northern Hausa language as "Western education is
sinful", has been behind almost daily killings in its
home base in the largely Muslim northeast, most
recently targeting Christians.
"Christians, everyone knows what they have done to
us and Muslims ... we were attacked and we decided
to defend ourselves and, because we were on the
right path, Allah has made us stronger," Shekau says
in Hausa, sat in front of two Kalashnikov rifles and
wearing a camouflage bullet proof jacket.
"Jonathan, (you) know full well that this thing is
beyond your powers," he added, referring to the
president.
Shekau is understood to have taken over control of
Boko Haram, which wants sharia law more widely
applied across Africa's most populous nation, after
the sect's founder Mohammed Yusuf was killed in
police custody in 2009 following an uprising in which
700 people were killed.
"Everyone knows how our leader was murdered and
everyone knows the way the Muslims were killed,"
Shekau says, remaining stony faced and calm
throughout.
"Catastrophe is caused by unbelief, unrest is unbelief,
injustice is unbelief, democracy is unbelief and the
constitution is unbelief." Continued...