A son of the founder of Boko Haram, Muslim Mohammed Yusuf has been captured in Chad where he was reportedly in charge of a jihadist group, an intelligence source and a former member of the insurgency said.
Yusuf was arrested with five other suspected members of the movement, which was founded in neighbouring Nigeria a few years before his birth by radical preacher Mohammed Yusuf.
The Islamist group has sown terror around the Lake Chad region for around 15 years and has mounted increasingly brazen attacks on villages and military bases in recent months.
Chadian police confirmed arresting six Boko Haram members, but could not confirm if one of them was the older Yusuf’s son.
A Nigerian intelligence source in the Lake Chad region told AFP at the weekend that they received a report of the arrest of a six-man jihadist cell in Chad.
“The team was headed by Muslim, the youngest son of the late Boko Haram founder,” said the source.
The source, however, said that the cell belonged to the Islamic State West Africa Province group, a rival offshoot that splintered off from Boko Haram over ideological disagreements.
The source added that Yusuf was an infant when his father was killed in 2009 during a crackdown on Boko Haram that left some 800 people dead, giving his age as 18.
Photos seen by AFP after the arrests in Chad showed a young, short, and slender man in a blue tracksuit, with a striking resemblance to Yusuf—standing next to far older men.
Yusuf, who goes by the alias Abdrahman Mahamat Abdoulaye, is the younger brother of ISWAP leader Habib Yusuf, alias Abu Mus’ab Al-Barnawi.
A former lieutenant of Yusuf’s father, who has denounced Boko Haram but has knowledge of the group’s inner workings, also said Yusuf had been arrested.
“He and the team were arrested by Chadian security. They are six in number,” he told AFP.
Chadian police said they had arrested “bandits who operate in the city… they are undocumented, they are members of Boko Haram,” police spokesman Paul Manga told AFP from N’djamena.
He said the cell was arrested “a few months ago.”
Nigeria’s counter-terrorism center and national intelligence agency did not provide an immediate response to AFP’s request for comment.
