By Abraham Shanedling
The U.S. Department of State
formally added Nigerian Islamist militant groups Boko Haram and its splinter
group, Ansaru, as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated
Global Terrorists” last week.
Boko Haram, which
has ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is responsible for thousands of
deaths in northeast and central Nigeria over the last several years, including
a 2011 suicide bombing of the United Nations building in Abuja, the State
Department said in
a statement. Also operating in Nigeria, Ansaru was responsible for the 2013
kidnapping and execution of seven international construction workers and
various attacks on Nigerian and Western targets.
The designations
of Boko Haram and Ansaru under the Immigration and Nationalization Act and
Executive Order 13224 now prohibit any material support to the groups and calls
for the freezing of all of the organizations’ assets in the United States. Read
more on the impact here.
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