Two Nigerians have been charged with collecting money from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen to pay for training for Nigerian militants, a court document shows.
The document filed late
on Thursday at the Federal High Court said two men from Nigeria's
commercial capital Lagos were accused of being members of the group and
of collecting around $6,200 in U.S. dollars and Saudi riyals.
Neither of the accused
was available for comment. If the men were convicted, it would be the
first case to directly link Nigerian militant groups to AQAP.
Security sources say the
militant Islamist sect Boko Haram, which launched an uprising in the
country's largely Muslim north in 2009, has linked up with al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), sending a few dozen fighters to Mali for
training.
Nigerian Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, jailed in the United States for a failed attempt to blow
up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in 2009, was seen as a
loner with no known links to Boko Haram or any other Nigerian Islamist
group.
Prosecutors said that
plot was directed by U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who had
become an al Qaeda leader in Yemen, where Abdulmutallab had been
studying.
The document, filed in
the court in the capital Abuja, said that, "Lukaman Babatunde, 30, at
Lagos between June and July 2011...provided facilities for a meeting
which you know is connected to an act of terrorism."
His accomplice Olaniyi
Lawal collected the cash "with intent that the said money shall be used
to recruit and transport members of a terrorist organization from
Nigeria to Yemen for combat training in terrorism," it said.
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