MS Risk Blog

Gunmen Target Jail in Central Nigeria

According to police officials, gunmen in Nigeria have freed more than 200 prisoners in the latest jailbreak to occur in the restive West African country.

Sources have reported that the gunmen late Saturday stormed the facility, which is located in the central Nigerian city of Minna, in Niger state near the capital Abuja. In recent years, Boko Haram, and its offshoot Ansaru, have been behind several prison raids. A police spokesman for Niger state confirmed the breakout, adding that the incident was still being investigated and that “its unclear if this is Boko Haram or some criminal gangs.” One security source did report that he doubted that “…there were many high profile Boko Haram suspects being held in Minna.” Deputy Superintendent Ibrahim Gambari has reported that police recaptured at least ten escapees from the medium security prison. Local residents reported hearing gunshots however they noted that no explosions were heard in the attack. One resident reported seeing the guards of the prison fleeing shortly after the first assault.

Saturday’s prison attack is the third to occur in the past three months in the West African nation. While jailbreaks are frequent, with police only capturing a fraction of those who escape, over the past several months, suspected Boko Haram militants have increasingly been targeting prisons across Nigeria in a bid to free jailed militants. On 1 December, more than 300 inmates broke out of a prison bombed by gunmen in southwest Ekiti state while on 3 November, 144 escaped from south-central Kogi state after gunmen bombed a prison wall. Two earlier jailbreaks were blamed on Boko Haram however it currently is unknown how many hundreds of Boko Haram suspects are being held in Nigerian jails. If Boko Haram is behind this latest string of prison attacks, it could be an attempt by the militant group to increase its numbers ahead of major attacks that are likely to be carried out over the upcoming holiday season. Over the past several weeks, Boko Haram has intensified its tempo of attacks, carrying out deadly bombings and suicide attacks across northeastern Nigeria on an almost daily basis, with the Nigerian military carrying out minimal efforts in order to prevent attacks from occurring.

The vast majority of people being held in Nigerian jails have either never been charged or are awaiting trial. Despite it being illegal to hold someone for more than 48 hours without bringing charges or presenting them to a magistrate, some prisoners have been held for many years. According to statistics released on 30 June by Nigeria’s Prisons Service, only 18,042 of 56,785 inmates have been convicted of a crime.

3 December – Ebola Situation Report

According to the World Health Organization’s newly released data, as of 3 December there have been 12,145 reported cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD), with 6,070 reported deaths. The WHO has also reported the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) targets of isolating and threating 70 percent of EVD cases and burying 70 percent of EVD-related deaths safely have likely been met in most of the districts in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In the three most affected countries, the case fatality rate is at 72% while in hospitalized patients, the case fatality rate stands at 60%.

Guinea

Case incidence in Guinea has slightly increased. In the week leading up to 30 November, there were seventy-seven confirmed cases reported in Guinea, compared with the 148 cases that were reported in the week before.

Since early October, the national transmission trend in Guinea has been slightly increasing, with between 75 and 148 confirmed cases reported in each of the past six weeks. Over the past three weeks, the eastern districts of N’Zerekore, Macenta and Kankan each saw a large number of new cases. In the week to 30 November, N’Zerekore reported 6 new confirmed cases, in comparison to 29 that were reported in the previous week. Macenta saw 15 new confirmed cases and 26 in the previous week; while Kankan saw 7 new confirmed cases, the same number as in the previous week. Officials have indicated that the persistent transmission in Kankan, and in the surrounding areas of Kerouane, Kouroussa and Kissidougou, is of particular concern as local populations infected with Ebola are likely to seek treatment either in the northern region of the country or in neighbouring Mali rather than at the existing facilities, which are located in the nearby south-eastern districts of Gueckedou and Macenta. The first imported Ebola case in Mali travelled from a city in the northern district of Siguiri, which borders Mali, and where there has been persistent transmission since early November. Two new cases were reported in Siguiri this week and between 1 and 3 cases have been reported over the past 7 weeks. According to the WHO, “the lack of established EVD treatment and isolation facilities in this northern, Sahelian zone of the country, combined with a higher than usual degree of resistance among communities to safe burial practices, make this area vulnerable to an increase in cases.”

In the central region of the country, the district of Faranah, which borders the northern Sierra Leonean district of Koinadugu, reported an average of 8 cases per week for each of the past 4 weeks. In the western region of the country, the capital, Conakry, reported 14 new confirmed cases in the week leading up to 30 November. Both Conakry and the neighbouring district of Coyah have reported an increase in the number of new cases during each of the past 2 weeks. In the week to 30 November, Coyah reported 15 new confirmed cases.

Liberia

Over the past five weeks, case incidence in Liberia has stabilized in some regions and is on the decline in others. In the five days leading up to 28 November, Liberia reported 43 new confirmed cases.

The district of Montserrado, which includes the capital Monrovia, reported 34 confirmed cases and accounted for 79% of all confirmed cases reported nationally in the week leading up to 28 November. Bomi (2 confirmed cases); Grand Bassa (4 confirmed cases); Grand Cape Mount (2 confirmed cases); and Margibi (1 confirmed case) are the only other districts to have reported a case/cases during this period.

In the northern region of the country, the district of Lofa, which is located on the border with Guinea and Sierra Leone, reported no cases for a fifth consecutive week.

Sierra Leone

Case incidence may still be increasing in Sierra Leone. In the week leading up to 30 November, officials in Sierra Leone reported 537 new confirmed cases. This is more cases than Guinea and Liberia combined.

The capital Freetown remains the worst affected area, reporting 202 new confirmed cases. Transmission also remains persistent and intense across the country with the exception of the south. The districts of Bo (23 cases); Bombali (66 cases); Kambia (14 cases); Kono (15 cases); Koinadugu (6 cases); Moyamba (3 cases); Port Loko (94 cases); Tonkolili (40 cases); and Western Rural Area (72 cases) continued to report high numbers of new confirmed cases.

In the southern districts of Kenema and Kailahun, both districts reported 0 and 1 case respectively. Since 1 November, Kenema has reported only one case. Bonthe has not reported a case in the past two weeks.

Spain

On 2 December 2014, the WHO declared Spain Ebola free after no new cases were reported since a nurse’s assistant who contracted the virus there tested negative for the deadly disease. Since then, 42 days have passed – effectively double the maximum known incubation period for the virus – without any further confirmed cases.

Syrian, Egyptian Electronic Armies take Aim at ISIS

The Syrian Electronic Army has returned, and a copycat army of hackers has sprung up in Egypt.

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is a group of hacktivists that support the Syrian government and its president, Bashar al Assad. On 27 November, the group targeted Gigya, a company which manages online comment platforms and Identity and Access Management for nearly 700 clients. The SEA breached Gigya’s account and redirected visitors to an SEA website.

The hack impacted 21 major websites including media outlets Aljazeera, the Chicago Tribune, CNBC, CNN Money, the Evening Standard, the Los Angeles Times, Microsoft, National Geographic, NBC, the New York Daily News, the Guardian, and the Independent. The breach also impacted tech companies including Dell, DirecTV, Logitech, Microsoft, and Verizon Wireless. For three and a half hours, visitors to the hacked sites received a message stating, “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA),” and were then redirected to an image of the SEA’s logo and a Syrian flag.

In response to the attack, Gigya CEO Patrick Salyer said, “To be absolutely clear: neither Gigya’s platform itself, nor any user, administrator nor operational data has been compromised and was never at risk of being compromised.”

On the SEA’s website, the pro-Assad hacktivists said the attack was launched in response to reports that Syrian airstrikes in Raqqa hit civilians, “while the truth the strikes hit the ISIS terrorists.” Raqqa, a city in northern Syria, is the headquarters for terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham. On Twitter, the group messaged, “Happy thanks giving, hope you didn’t miss us. The press: Please don’t pretend #ISIS are civilians.”

In a second Tweet, the SEA provided users with information on how to prevent hacking:  “We’re the good guys so this was harmless but just in case the bad guys copy us, use NoScript with Firefox: noscript.net.”

Since their emergence on the hactivist scene in 2011, the SEA has caused disruption to numerous websites, but they are best known for hacking Twitter account of the Associated Press’ in April 2013. The group posted a tweet claiming that Barack Obama had been injured, causing Dow Jones Industrial Average to immediately plunge 143 points in response.

Meanwhile in Egypt, a copycat group has risen and is targeting ISIS and its online propaganda. In late November, less than 24 hours after ISIS social media accounts posted a threatening message from the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the Egyptian Electronic Army (EEA) replaced the audio recording with a song, and replaced the ISIS transcript with a logo resembling that of the Egyptian military, accompanied by a writing in Arabic that read “Egyptian Cyber Army.”

The modus-operandi was nearly identical to the methods used by the Syrian Electronic Army, which has inspired the group. However the hacktivists do not have any connection to one another.  According to a spokesman for the group, a man claiming to be a 37-year-old former Cairo police officer who goes by the name “Khaled Abubakr”, the EEA group’s members are all Egyptian. Many come from a military or police background, and all support the Egyptian government led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. It is unclear whether the group is state sanctioned.

The EEA seeks to defend al-Sisi’s governments against opponent such as the Muslim Brotherhood or ISIS. The broad anti-ISIS perspective in the nation has brought a mass of hacktivists to the group who want to counter the terrorist group’s influence on the Internet. The spokesman said that Baghdadi “was delivering a message to all extremists all over the Middle East and my country that you have to use your weapons in the faces of the government and our people, so we took it down and replaced it with a very popular song. All the people instead of hearing this pig heard our song and laughed.”

The group has also claimed to have infiltrated top ISIS web forums, and American pro-democracy websites including the Open Society Foundation and the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative, however there is no solid evidence of these activities. A security researcher says that some of the EAA’s supporters appear to have highly capable technical background.

The EAA has refused to disclose how the attack was conducted. A spokesman for the Internet Archive said that no outside account “made any modifications” to the files other than the original uploader. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the account was taken over by the hackers. The group claims they will continue to conduct hacktivist activities. The EAA spokesman said, “We have our people spying on al-Furqan, [the media arm of ISIS] which is the media of the terrorists and this will not be the last thing we are going to do. They must expect us any time.”

ISIS declares Sinai as the new destination for young fighters

3  December- The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant and the Sham(ISIS) are conducting a marketing strategy which recommends the Sinai as a destination for young militant recruits. The move comes after Sinai-based terrorist group Ansar Beit al Maqdis (Ansar Jerusalem), swore allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi on 10 November. Soon thereafter, Ansar Beit al Maqdis began to refer to itself as “the Islamic State’s province in the Sinai”. ISIS has envisioned a caliphate stretching from Iraq to the Mediterranean. While ISIS does not have any actual control in the Sinai, the announcement is an attempt to marginalise other militants, perhaps to convince them to pledge allegiance to Baghdadi as well. ISIS supporters are calling on fighters globally to help Baghdadi’s organization build up its presence in the Sinai even further.

ISIS has made use of the Al Battar Media Establishment and the Media Front in Support of the Islamic State, two radicalised publishing establishments that deliver propaganda through social media. Each has posted a six-page article on Twitter written by a fighter known as “Abu Musab al Gharib”, who argues that the establishment of the Islamic State’s province in the Sinai will lead to greater unification of ISIS groups across the Middle East and North Africa. In November, ISIS gained total administrative control over Derna in the Eastern Province of Libya, and has set up training facilities in the mountainous regions in order to train North African fighters. By creating a unified front, Gharib ominously states, it will become easier for the jihadists to advance on Jerusalem and engage in the “liquidating” of the Jews in Egypt, Golan, Jordan, and Lebanon.

ISIS’s expansion has increased already existing tensions with other militant organisations. Al Qaeda has appeared to be at odds with the group and has competed for militants in “recruitment drives”, even opening a branch in Southeast Asia. Baghdadi and ISIS claim that their “caliphate” has usurped the authority of terrorist organisations in Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. However the most organised and strong among these groups have not given over to Baghdadi. However despite the hindrance of competing terrorist organisations, reports indicate that ISIS’s campaign has been successful. Foreign fighters from the Levant, North Africa, Yemen, and elsewhere have travelled to the Sinai for training and other purposes.

Worryingly, the Sinai group appears to be increasingly active. Over the last weekend of November, Ansar Beit al Maqdis, under their new moniker, claimed to have killed an American oil worker. On Sunday, the group published an image on Twitter of a passport and two identification cards belonging to William Henderson, a 58-year-old employee of the Apache Corporation and Qarun Petroluem Co. Henderson was thought to have been killed in a carjacking incident in August.

It is uncertain whether Ansar Beit al Maqdis was actually responsible for the killing or just claiming it; the US State department is still investigating Henderson’s death and the US Embassy in Cairo has not disclosed any information. However the claim raises international concern that Sinai based radicals may begin to expand their targets beyond Egyptian military and security forces, or may even begin seeking Westerners for kidnap for ransom, or to send a visible political message.

Boko Haram Increases Tempo of Attacks in Wake of Ceasefire Claims

Boko Haram has been carrying out attacks with increased frequency and deadliness since the Nigerian military declared in October that the insurgents had agreed to a ceasefire. The recent wave of attacks across northern Nigeria have demonstrated the terrorist group’s continued abilities to strike at will in the region despite a state of emergency that was put in place to curb the group’s five year insurgency.

The most recent attacks attributed to Boko Haram occurred Monday in the northeastern state capitals of Damaturu and Maiduguri. At least five people were killed and 32 wounded when twin blasts targeted a crowded market in Maiduguri. The latest attack in the Borno state capital comes nearly a week after two female suicide bombers attacked the same market on 25 November, killing 78 people. Several witnesses reported Monday that two female bombers were responsible for the attacks. A separate attack in Damaturu, the capital of neighbouring Yobe state, began shortly after 05:00 local time (0400 GMT), with militants setting fire to a riot police base, and later attacking a primary school and the city’s university. On the ground sources reported that Boko Haram fighters, who have obtained most of their weapons by seizing them from the Nigerian army, appeared to be trying to gain access to military equipment stockpiled in the city.

Monday’s attacks on the two state capitals appear to be a continued acceleration of extremist violence in northeastern Nigeria, which in recent weeks has seen insurgents staging attacks on an almost daily basis. Over the past two weeks, attacks linked to Boko Haram have killed at least 220 people, with some experts indicating that the number is likely closer to 300. On Friday, at least 120 people were killed after three explosions occurred during prayer hours at one of the largest mosques in the city of Kano. Security officials believe that the Grand Mosque in Kano may have been targeted after one of Nigeria’s top Islamic leaders recently issued a call to arms to fight Boko Haram. On Thursday, at least forty people were killed after a bomb exploded at a bus station in Mubi, the second largest city in Adamawa state. While some of these attacks have yet to be claimed, Boko Haram is widely suspected to be responsible.

Boko Haram’s attacks and the recent seizure of several towns in northeastern Nigeria have killed thousands of civilians and forced many to flee, resulting in a massive displacement that is creating a humanitarian crisis in Africa’s most populous nation, and in neighbouring states. According to a report released by Human Rights Watch earlier this year, from January to June 2014, Boko Haram attacks killed at least 2,053 people. The recent escalation of attacks has also caused thousands to flee, with many seeking shelter elsewhere in Nigeria, or opting to cross the border in neighbouring Cameroon or Niger.

Earlier this month, the militant group seized a town in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state, killing nearly fifty people and forcing at least 3,000 people to flee to Niger. According to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, since May 2013, at least 100,000 people have fled to Niger. Last month, Boko Haram seized control of the town of Mubi, in Adamawa state. That attack forced at least 13,000 people to flee to Cameroon. Continued violent attacks will only worsen the already fragile humanitarian situation in both Nigeria and in neighbouring states.

Boko Haram’s expanding threat and recent cross-border raids in Cameroon have demonstrated the militant group’s desires to expand their operations. Fears that Boko Haram fighters may soon target neighbouring states have prompted officials in Niger and Cameroon to close schools and health centres located along the borders with northern Nigeria over fears of attacks carried out by the Islamist group. Many civilians living in towns close to the porous border have opted to leave, seeking safety elsewhere.

The Nigerian government’s state of emergency, which was imposed in May 2013, has done little to curb the violence. The recent denial of a third extension of the emergency rule demonstrated that Nigerian MP’s, like Nigerian civilians, are becoming increasingly frustrated with the situation. The Nigerian government’s security strategy now remains uncertain while the tempo of Boko Haram attacks is likely to increase over the month of December as the holiday season approaches.