ISWAP Claims Responsibility For Kuje Prison Attack
The attack on the Medium Security Custodial Center in Kuje, Abuja, on Tuesday has been blamed on the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
This information was made public on Wednesday in a statement published by the Islamic State-run news outlet A’maq Agency.
According to a translation of the statement, “Islamic State militants penetrated the Nigerian government jail yesterday (Tuesday), in Kuje city, on the outskirts of the capital, Abuja, after collapsing its walls, and successfully rescued scores of captives.”
Armed non-state actors appeared to have chosen Tuesday night to launch their attack in the nation’s capital when they broke into the prison, releasing hundreds of prisoners in the process.
Despite the fact that officials blamed terrorists for the attack, 64 Boko Haram fighters who had been detained for their participation in the insurgency in the North East were missing after the incident.
President Muhammadu Buhari made a site visit to the incident to assess the situation in the midst of the intense criticism it had provoked.
The President expressed his dissatisfaction with the intelligence at the institution after learning what had happened and asked numerous questions, including how terrorists could attack a security installation and get away with it.
Tomasz Rolbecki, a scholar who studies ISWAP activities in sub-Saharan Africa, also connected the assault on the correctional facility to the terrorist organization.
“I wanted to believe it was not them (ISWAP), but here we are,” he said in a series of tweets while also quoting and sharing A’maq Agency’s video. “Watching the IS supporter groups right now, they are, as expected, absolutely ecstatic (sadly) and are using the same name as the campaign of prison breaks in Iraq in 2012-13 (the infamous “Breaking the Walls” campaign).
“There is one question to answer – how did ISWAP manage to do it? From previous claims, the cells that could’ve been responsible (I’m talking about the one in Suleja and the one in Kogi) seemed very small and unable to do something at such a scale.”
