AP Exclusive: Nigeria Secret Police Details Leaked

BY BASHIR ADIGUN AND JON GAMBRELL, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Personnel records of former and current members of Nigeria's top domestic spy agency, including home addresses and names of immediate family members, leaked onto the Internet in a threatening message that claimed to come from a radical Islamist sect that's killed hundreds of people this year alone, The Associated Press has learned.

The leak of personal data of more than 60 past and current employees of Nigeria's State Security Service remained easily accessible on the Internet for days and had details about the agency's director-general, including his mobile phone number, bank account particulars and contact information for his son.

Many of agents listed who could be reached by the AP said they received no official warning from the spy agency that their information had been posted online nor been otherwise alerted. The material has been deleted from the comment section of a website, but the security breach astonished spy service veterans and calls into question whether Nigeria's intelligence community, whose agents already have released suspected terrorists out of religious and ethnic sympathies, are too compromised from within to stop the violence now plaguing Africa's most populous nation. Nigeria Secret Police Leak.

A senior Nigerian intelligence official said authorities were aware that the leak had happened and that many were embarrassed by it. He spoke on condition of anonymity as information about the leak was not to have been made public.

Marilyn Ogar, a spokeswoman for the State Security Service, declined to answer questions Thursday about the posting of the information.

The State Security Service, created in 1986 by then-military ruler Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, monitors domestic dissent in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation of more than 160 million people. Though geared toward stopping terrorism and destabilizing coups, the agency routinely faces criticism for targeting government critics. In Abuja, Nigeria's capital, the agency operates out of cars made to look like the many green taxis that roam the streets. Plain-clothed agents of the service routinely question foreign journalists at airports, border crossings and on city streets if they see reporters conducting interviews. Agents carrying assault rifles often guard major events in the country.

Many agents for the typically secretive agency are preoccupied with concealing their identities, as most try to blend unnoticed into society.

The information leak came in two postings earlier this month on a website that provides rewritten news on Nigeria. The first posting threatened to kill agents of the State Security Service on behalf of Boko Haram, a radical Islamist sect responsible for more than 660 killings this year alone in Nigeria. The second posting simply offered a block of text containing biographical and other details about the agents.

Though the comments have been removed, the AP is not identifying the website involved as cached versions of the comments remain online and intelligence service agents have been killed by Boko Haram members in the past.

The list includes former and current agents across the country, including Director-General Ekpeyong Ita. Those reached by the AP who were willing to talk expressed disbelief that sensitive information like that could make its way to the Internet.

Sect member dies, prison break frees 40 in Nigeria

By Haruna Umar and Bashir Adigun, Associated Press

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — A top radical Islamist sect member blamed for a deadly Christmas Day church bombing in Nigeria has been killed by security forces, says the sect, which demonstrated in a prison break Sunday that his death has not affected its ability to keep fighting.

A statement attributed to the Boko Haram sect and obtained Sunday by The Associated Press said the group is happy about Habibu Bama's "martyrdom."

Bama, a former soldier, died after sustaining injuries from a gun battle between security forces and the sect in the northeastern city of Damaturu earlier this week, Nigeria's State Security Service said.

The battle occurred from Monday to Tuesday as authorities fought back against the sect that struck six churches, five primary schools, a police station and a police outpost, authorities said.

Bama had been declared wanted in connection with the Dec. 25 bombing of St. Theresa Catholic Church in the town of Madalla, just outside of the capital, Abuja, killing at least 44 people.

Officials also believe he was involved in a federal police headquarters bombing last June and the United Nations headquarters suicide car bombing in Abuja last August that killed 25 people.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for all three attacks last year. It is also held responsible for more than 620 deaths this year alone, according to an AP count.

The Nigerian government has failed to corral the growing sectarian violence, leading President Goodluck Jonathan Friday to fire the West African nation's security adviser and defense minister.

Security forces in Damaturu were still reeling from days of sustained sect attacks when Boko Haram raided a police station early Sunday, freeing 40 suspected sect members, said Yobe State Commissioner of police Patrick Egbuniwe.

He said one inmate was killed in the ensuing gun battle, and a prison warden was wounded.

The sect has launched several prison breaks in the past.

A prison break in the central Nigerian town of Koton-Karifi in Kogi state freed 119 inmates in February. It mirrored a massive prison break in the northeastern city of Bauchi in September 2010 when Boko Haram freed about 700 inmates.

Nigeria's prisons remain overcrowded and understaffed, with the majority of those imprisoned waiting for years for trials that likely will never come. A 2007 study by Amnesty International called the system "appalling," with children remaining locked up with their parents and guards routinely bribed by inmates. Despite pledges by the government to reform the system, it remains largely the same today.

Associated Press writer Bashir Adigun contributed to this report from Abuja, Nigeria