US 'to name Nigeria's Boko Haram as a terrorist group'

US law enforcement and regulatory agencies will be
blocked from undertaking business and financial
transactions with Boko Haram

Since 2010, more than 1,700 people have been killed in
attacks by Boko Haram, which means "Western education
is forbidden." Photo: AFP/Getty Images
Reuters
12:34AM GMT 13 Nov 2013
Comment
The State Department will formally designate the Nigerian
Islamist militant group Boko Haram as a "foreign terrorist
organisation" on Wednesday, congressional sources and
others have said.
The designation is significant because it directs US law
enforcement and regulatory agencies to block business
and financial transactions with Boko Haram, which wants
to impose Islamic law in northern Nigeria and has ties to al
Qaeda.
The move makes it a crime under US law to provide
"material support" to the group. A State Department
spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request
for comment.
Boko Haram and other splinter Islamist groups are seen as
the biggest security threat in Nigeria, Africa's most
populous country and top oil exporter.
In May, President Goodluck Jonathan increased a military
campaign against Boko Haram. His government said last
week that it has killed 70 civilians.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, which a source said
has been notified of the decision, has scheduled a hearing
on the group for Wednesday.
"The likelihood of more hearings on this issue may have
been a final straw in encouraging the State Department to
acknowledge something which has been apparent for
some time - the growing relationship between Boko Haram
and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," said US Rep.
Patrick Meehan, a Pennsylvania Republican who convened
his own hearing on the issue.
Mr Meehan chairs a Homeland Security subcommittee, not
a Foreign Affairs committee, and has not been briefed by
the State Department. "Boko Haram is of growing
influence and of major concern," he said.
Last year, the Justice Department's senior top national
security official, Lisa Monaco, sent a letter to the State
Department arguing that Boko Haram met the criteria to
be listed as a "foreign terrorist" group because, she said, it
either engages in terrorism that threatens the United
States or has a capability or intent to do so.
Monaco is now President Barack Obama's top White
House counter-terrorism advisor.
Although the State Department later designated three
alleged Boko Haram leaders as terrorists, it stopped short
of a more sweeping declaration against the organization.
For two years, Meehan and Rep. Peter King of New York
have pressed the State Department to put Boko Haram on
its list of terrorist groups alongside the likes of al Qaeda
and Lebanon's Hezbollah.
They have warned that an August 2011 attack on a UN
building in Abuja, Nigeria, marked a turning point as a
threat to U.S. interests. Meehan has noted that the United
States did not perceive al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
as a threat to US interests until after the attempting
downing of an airliner by a Nigerian near Detroit on
Christmas Day, 2009.