N1bn bounty still on Shekau — US

The United States is still maintaining the $7 million (N1.4 billion) bounty it placed on the leader of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram.

The US Department of State on Wednesday issued a list of 71 most-wanted terrorists in the world with bounties totalling $375m (N74.6bn) as “rewards for information that leads to (their) arrest or conviction.”

Rewards for Justice, a State Department’s anti-terrorism programme, had first offered the amount as a reward to persons with information on the whereabouts of the Boko Haram leader in June 2013.

The President Barack Obama-led administration, in the fresh list, placed a whopping $25 million, the single largest bounty, on Ayman al-Zawahiri, suspected to be one of the doctors and advisors to Osama bin Laden, the late leader of al-Qaeda.

Al-Zawahiri is suspected to have played a role in bombing of the US embassy in 1998.

Four Islamic State terrorists appeared on the list with a total of $20 million bounty on them.

They were Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli ($7 million); IS’s official spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani ($5 million); Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili alias ‘Omar the Chechen’ ($5 million); and Tariq Bin-al-Tahar Bin al Falih al-’Awni al-Harzi ($3 million).

A senior leader of the IS, Abu Du’a alias Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; and al-Zawahiri’s deputy and self-proclaimed leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahishi, and four others had $10 million bounty placed on each of them.

Shekau was among the three with $7 million bounty. Others were a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iran, Muhsin al-Fadhli; and Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli…