Lagos (AFP) - Nigeria's military has said it has made its first arrests as a result of publishing a list of the 100 "most wanted" Boko Haram suspects.

Army spokesman Colonel Sani Usman said in an emailed statement late on Sunday that one man whose photograph featured on the poster was spotted and held at Abuja airport.

"Chindo Bello was apprehended by aviation security as he was boarding (an) Aero Contractors' flight to Lagos," he said.

No further details were given about Bello or when he was held but Usman said security agents were tipped off and the arrest was made "as he attempted to flee".

He was handed over to military intelligence for questioning, he added.

On Monday evening, Usman said a second man, identified as a Cameroonian national called Ishaku Wardifen, was held by troops at a checkpoint in Adamawa state, northeast Nigeria.

"Visual matching with photographs on the poster... shows that he clearly resembles the suspect on serial number 22 on the list," he added.

"The suspect has been handed over to military intelligence for further investigation and possible prosecution."

The "most wanted" poster, published in English and the local, northeastern languages of Hausa and Kanuri late last month, appeals for public help in tracking down suspected Boko Haram members.

The group's leader Abubakar Shekau features twice in the rows of colour photographs, reflecting the military's belief he is in fact a composite character played by lookalikes.

President Muhammadu Buhari has called for the public's help in providing intelligence to the military, particularly with the Islamists having increased attacks on urban areas.

In a tense internal meeting, staffers of the Center for American Progress criticized the think tank’s decision to host the Israeli leader. Credit: Getty Images


A simmering internal disagreement at the Center for American Progress over the think tank’s decision to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week escalated into open dissent and infighting during an intense but civil all-staff meeting on Friday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the exchange.

The powerful liberal think tank — known in Washington simply as CAP — will host Netanyahu on Tuesday as part of the Israeli leader’s closely watched visit to the United States aimed at repairing ties between Jerusalem and Washington following the bruising debate over the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday morning and will finish the day at an award dinner at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Since the announcement of the event at CAP last month, the progressive group has come under fire from former CAP officials and peace activists who argue that hosting the Israeli leader inadvertently gives his right-wing policies a bipartisan stamp of approval. In an effort to quell concerns internally, Winnie Stachelberg, CAP’s executive vice president for external affairs, and Brian Katulis, a senior fellow, explained and defended the decision to host Netanyahu in an all-staff meeting on the 10th floor of CAP on Friday.

According to two individuals in the room, Katulis and Stachelberg told staff that the decision to approve the Israeli government’s request for an event came after careful consideration. They touted the fact that Netanyahu would undergo tough scrutiny in a question-and-answer format and that CAP is well suited to provide accurate context to issues facing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The discussion will be moderated by CAP President Neera Tanden.

But following the remarks, around a dozen CAP employees stood up and delivered an impassioned joint statement criticizing CAP’s decision to hold the event, read aloud by a designated speaker.

“It was a rebuttal,” said one staff member who was at the meeting. “It was clear that the sentiment was that this was the wrong choice to make as a progressive institution that cares about human rights, justice, and the oppressed.”

The opponents of the event said they doubted the merits of a dialogue given the Netanyahu government’s conduct in recent years, particularly in the 2014 Gaza conflict, which resulted in the deaths of 2,100 Palestinians and 66 Israeli soldiers and seven civilians in Israel. Left-wing critics and humanitarian organizations have long accused Israel of using disproportionate force in bombing raids and policing efforts; Israel and its backers in the United States have noted that Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israel indiscriminately and operated in crowded civilian areas.

At the Friday meeting, opponents of the upcoming speech received an enthusiastic round of applause in the 100-plus person conference room despite the presence of senior CAP leadership. “There weren’t just isolated pockets of disapproval, among the staff — it was practically the whole room clapping for 10-15 seconds,” said another staffer in the room.

Stachelberg, in an interview with Foreign Policy, said she would not discuss the details of an internal meeting except that “the staff expressed their thoughts, and we had an open and engaged discussion with senior CAP leadership.”

She noted that as a think tank, “we believe we need to be open in engaging with people we don’t agree with.”

“Had we said no [to Netanyahu], there would be no public forum where he would’ve been asked tough questions, and quite frankly, we would’ve been hypocritical,” she said. She noted that the Israelis reached out to CAP in the first place and that in the past, CAP has been “highly critical of the prime minister for only dealing with the right.”

The dispute at CAP is in many ways reflective of a broader ideological struggle within American liberalism about support for Israel. The Democratic Party establishment and donor class are strongly supportive of the Jewish state and are seeking to find new ways to increase U.S. military aid for Israel following the Iran deal. But recent polling shows that support for Israel among rank-and-file Democrats has fallen by 10 points in one year. AGallup poll released this year found that fewer than half of Democrats, 48 percent, report sympathizing more with Israelis than with Palestinians as it relates to the Middle East conflict, while 83 percent of Republicans sympathize more with Israel.

Grassroots Democrats are increasingly skeptical of Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state solution with Palestine, and his pre-election campaigning in March warning that “Arab voters are coming out in droves” cemented some of those concerns. (The Israeli leader apologized for those remarks following his election victory.) Netanyahu’s public campaign to undermine Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran also created divisions within the Democratic Party.

The controversy at CAP has gained attention given the organization’s close affiliations with the Clinton family. CAP’s first president and founder, John Podesta, was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and is Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman. CAP‘s current president, Tanden, served as policy director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008. If Clinton manages to win her bid for the White House, a number of CAP staffers are well positioned for plum jobs in the next U.S. administration. In Clinton’s bid for the White House, the Democratic front-runner has delicately sought to convince Jewish voters that she would be better for Israel than Obama. She has expressed this to wealthy pro-Israel donors in a number of closed-door discussions, with varying levels of success. Some Obama administration officials and left-leaning activists resent such overtures.

The dissidents within CAP, meanwhile, are drawing support from an array of other like-minded groups. On Monday, the left-leaning Jewish Voice for Peace and the Arab American Institute released a letter expressing disappointment with CAP’s decision to host Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu knows that he has created a deep partisan divide in the US over Israeli policies and is attempting to repackage his increasingly far-right agenda as bi-partisan consensus,” reads the letter, signed by Noah T. Winer, a co-founder of MoveOn.org; Karen Ackerman, former AFL-CIO political director; Samer Khalaf, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; and other progressive leaders and organizations.

Separately, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is planning to picket outside CAP’s offices on Tuesday, promoting the slogan that “Netanyahu is #NotProgressive.”

On Monday, Obama and Netanyahu struck a conciliatory tone and said they would be discussing plans for future U.S. military assistance to Israel as part of a new memorandum of understanding to be negotiated over the next two years.

“Mr. President, I want to thank you for your commitment to further bolstering Israel’s security in the memorandum of understanding that we’re discussing,” Netanyahu said. Israel already receives $3.1 billion a year in American military aid, more than any other country, but officials have suggested the assistance package could expand under a new agreement.

Foreign Policy national security reporter Dan De Luce contributed to this report

Photo credit: Getty Images

ABC News Videos
Louisiana Cops Charged With 2nd Degree Murder in Death of 6-Year-Old

MARKSVILLE, La. (AP) — A police body camera recorded the father of a 6-year-old autistic boy with his hands up and posing no threat as police fired into his car, severely wounding the motorist and killing his son, the man's lawyer said Monday.

"This was not a threatening situation for the police," said Mark Jeansonne, an attorney for Chris Few, who remained hospitalized and could not attend Monday's funeral of his son, Jeremy Mardis.

Derrick Stafford, 32, of Mansura, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, of Marksville, were ordered held on $1 million bonds Monday on second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder charges, Jeansonne said.

The lawyer said he hasn't seen the video himself, but its contents were described during the hearing. Louisiana's state police chief, Col. Mike Edmonson, said Friday that "it's the most disturbing thing I've seen — and I will leave it at that."

Few's condition was improving Monday, but he had not been told as of midday that his son is dead, Jeansonne said. His stepfather, Morris German, said last week that Few had bullet fragments in his brain and lung.

Greenhouse is the son of a top assistant prosecutor for District Attorney Charles A. Riddle, who recused himself from the case on Monday, calling it "not good for any of us."

Judge William Bennett set the officers' bond during a hearing he held inside the jail after refusing media requests to open the proceedings. No transcripts were made available, and the judge later issued a sweeping gag order prohibiting anyone involved in the case, including potential witnesses and victims, from providing any information to the media.

Investigators have been reviewing forensics evidence, 911 calls and body camera recordings, but said little about them even before the gag order.

The official silence leaves many questions unanswered, including what prompted the fatal confrontation, and whether anyone else is being investigated for any crimes. At least two other officers were involved, authorities said, but their roles remain unclear.

Investigators have not suggested that race is a factor in the shooting, which may not fit neatly into a national debate about race and policing. Booking records describe the officers as African-American; no available records describe the race of the father and son.

Few, a boat pilot on the Red River, was on probation at the time of the shooting after pleading guilty to driving while intoxicated in February, according to court records.

Stafford is a Marksville Police lieutenant; Greenhouse is a city marshal. Both were on marshal duty Tuesday night. Initial reports suggested they were trying to serve Few with a warrant when he fled onto a dead-end road and then reversed his car in their direction at about 9:30 p.m.

But Edmonson said there was no evidence of a warrant, nor any gun at the scene.

The officers were moved from the jail in Marksville to a lockup in the central Louisiana city of Alexandria after Monday's bond hearing, for reasons no one would explain, citing the gag order.

The possibility that they could post bond and remain free during the investigation didn't sit well with some townspeople who gathered outside the jail.

"The same day the boy is being buried," said Barbara Scott. "Shame, shame, shame."

"This child couldn't hurt a fly and his life is gone. I feel justice was not served," added Latasha Murray.

Jeremy Mardis was by all accounts a happy first-grader at Lafargue Elementary in Effie, Louisiana, where he attended school after his parents split and he moved to Marksville, where his father's family lives.

Jeremy was mourned Monday at his funeral in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where his mother, Katie Mardis, lives with the boy's sister.

"He was just a very sweet loving little boy who enjoyed being at school and enjoyed his friends," said Anita Bonnette, his assistant principal at Lafargue, where a crisis team was brought in to counsel Jeremy's classmates and teachers.

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Santana contributed to this story from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

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This story has been changed to correct Greenhouse's first name to Norris; an earlier version erroneously said his name was Derrick.

Lawyer: Man had hands up when cops killed son

Associated Press Videos
Football Players Join Univ. of Missouri Protests

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The president of the University of Missouri system and the head of its flagship campus resigned Monday with the football team and others on campus in open revolt over what they saw as indifference to racial tensions at the school.

President Tim Wolfe, a former business executive with no previous experience in academic leadership, took "full responsibility for the frustration" students expressed and said their complaints were "clear" and "real."

For months, black student groups had complained that Wolfe was unresponsive to racial slurs and other slights on the overwhelmingly white main campus of the state's four-college system. The complaints came to a head two days ago, when at least 30 black football players announced they would not play until the president left. A graduate student went on a weeklong hunger strike.

Wolfe's announcement came at the start of what had been expected to be a lengthy closed-door meeting of the school's governing board.

"This is not the way change comes about," he said, alluding to recent protests, in a halting statement that was simultaneously apologetic, clumsy and defiant. "We stopped listening to each other."

He urged students, faculty and staff to use the resignation "to heal and start talking again to make the changes necessary."

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University of Missouri system President Tim Wolfe speaks on the phone in a room in University Hall o …

Hours later, the top administrator of the Columbia campus, Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, announced he would step down at the end of the year and shift to leading research efforts.

The school's undergraduate population is 79 percent white and 8 percent black. The state is about 83 percent white and nearly 12 percent black. The Columbia campus is about 120 miles west of Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was killed last year in a shooting that helped spawn the national "Black Lives Matter" movement rebuking police treatment of minorities.

In response to the race complaints, Wolfe had taken little public action and made few statements. As students leveled more grievances this fall, he was increasingly seen as aloof, out of touch and insensitive to their concerns. He soon became the protesters' main target.

In a statement issued Sunday, Wolfe acknowledged that "change is needed" and said the university was working to draw up a plan by April to promote diversity and tolerance. But by the end of that day, a campus sit-in had grown in size, graduate student groups planned walkouts and politicians began to weigh in.

Sophomore Katelyn Brown said she wasn't necessarily aware of chronic racism at the school, but she applauded the efforts of black student groups.

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In this Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015, photo, members of the Legion of Black Collegians and the Concerned S …

"I personally don't see it a lot, but I'm a middle-class white girl," she said. "I stand with the people experiencing this." She credited social media with propelling the protests, saying it offered "a platform to unite."

At a news conference Monday, head football coach Gary Pinkel said his players were concerned with the health of Jonathan Butler, who had not eaten for a week as part of protests against Wolfe.

"During those discussions," athletic director Mack Rhoades said, "there was never any talk about anybody losing their job. It was simply and primarily about a young man's life."

After Wolfe's announcement, Butler ended his strike. He appeared weak and unsteady as two people helped him into a sea of celebrants on campus. Many broke into dance upon seeing him.

Football practice was to resume Tuesday ahead of Saturday's game against Brigham Young University at Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs. Canceling the game could have cost the school more than $1 million.

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In this Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015, photo, members of the anti-racism and black awareness group Concerne …

Shaun Harper, executive director for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, said the black football players "understood that they have the power."

"That is so rare," said Harper, who authored a 2013 study on black male student-athletes and racial inequities in NCAA Division I sports. "Not in our modern history have we seen black students collectively flex their muscle in this way."

The protests began after Payton Head, the president of the student government at the Columbia campus, said in September that people in a passing pickup truck shouted racial slurs at him. Head is black. In early October, members of a black student organization said slurs were hurled at them by an apparently drunken white student.

Frustrations flared again during a homecoming parade, when black protesters blocked Wolfe's car, and he did not get out and talk to them. They were removed by police. Also, a swastika drawn in feces was found recently in a dormitory bathroom.

The university did take some steps to ease tensions. At Loftin's request, the school announced plans to offer diversity training to all new students starting in January, as well as faculty and staff. On Friday, the chancellor issued an open letter decrying racism after the swastika was found.

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FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2015, file photo, Missouri running back Russell Hansbrough, center, fights h …

The governing board said an interim system president would be named soon, and board members vowed Monday to work toward a "culture of respect."

The board planned to appoint an officer to oversee diversity and equality at all four campuses. It also promised a full review of other policies, more support for victims of discrimination and a more diverse faculty.

Head, the Missouri Students Association president, called those changes a step "in the right direction."

"It's great to see that from the UM system. It's something that I honestly I didn't expect but had been hoping for, for a long time," he said.

Many of the protests have been led by an organization called Concerned Student 1950, which gets its name from the year the university accepted its first black student. Group members besieged Wolfe's car at the parade, and they conducted a weeklong sit-in on a campus plaza.

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FILE - In this Friday, April 11, 2014, file photo, University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe partic …

On Monday night, a group of about 100 people gathered at that plaza to pray and sing.

The group demanded that Wolfe resign and "acknowledge his white male privilege." It also sought a 10-year plan to retain more marginalized students and the hiring of more minorities at the university's counseling center.

On Sunday, the Missouri Students Association said in a letter to the board that there had been "an increase in tension and inequality with no systemic support" since Brown's death.

Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, was fatally shot by a white police officer during a struggle. The Justice Department later cleared officer Darren Wilson, concluding evidence backed his claim that he shot Brown in self-defense after Brown tried to grab the officer's gun.

Wolfe, 57, a former software executive and Missouri business school graduate, was hired as president in 2011.

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In this Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015, photo, members of the University of Missouri's Legion of Black C …

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Associated Press writers Alan Scher Zagier in St. Louis, Ralph D. Russo in New York and Errin Haines Whack in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

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Zagier can be reached at https://twitter.com/azagier .

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This story has been corrected to show that Wolfe is 57, not 56.