FOG OF WAR

Nigeria: the Face of Boko Haram Is Dead

But he may only be a lookalike.

The Nigerian military is claiming to have killed the man seen in Boko Haram’s propaganda videos. In YouTube clips, like the one showing hundreds of kidnapped school girls earlier this year, a man claiming to be the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, taunted the West, but Nigerian authorities believed Shekau was already dead, and the man in the videos was a lookalike called Mohammed Bashir. The military claims Bashir was also killed this week during a battle between Boko Haram and Nigerian air and land forces. If the real leader was already dead, it’s entirely unclear if Bashir had taken over command of the terror group or if he was just a hype-man.