Boko Haram sect leader returned to custody

The alleged mastermind of a radical Islamist sect’s Christmas Day church bombing fled across Nigeria after escaping police custody and hid for about a month before finally being apprehended yesterday, authorities said.

The arrest of Kabiru Sokoto by Nigeria’s secret police and military came after his escape led to national embarrassment amid the increasingly bloody attacks carried out by the sect, known as Boko Haram.

Officers from the state security service and soldiers raided a home early yesterday morning in Mutum Biyu in Taraba state, where they suspected Sokoto was hiding, said Marilyn Ogar, a spokeswoman for the police agency. They found Sokoto hiding behind a rack of laundry.

Authorities did not say how they found him, though secret police have in the past tracked suspects using the signals from their mobile phones. Ms Ogar said Sokoto was hiding in a suspected accomplice’s home. He initially fled to Nasarawa state, which borders Abuja, then to Taraba state, which borders Cameroon, she said.

Police named Sokoto as the prime suspect for the 25 December bombing of a Catholic church in Madalla, a city outside of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

That attack killed at least 44 people as a car bomb detonated as worshippers left an early morning mass.

Officers arrested Sokoto in January at the compound of the Borno state governor in Abuja.

Borno, in Nigeria’s northeast, is Boko Haram’s spiritual home.

However, a day after his arrest, a police commissioner ordered Sokoto to be transferred to another police station in Abaji, a town outside of the capital.

Authorities say the officers guarding Sokoto were attacked by suspected sect members and that he escaped, though the timing of the transfer and the official version of how he escaped has been questioned.