I am back: Boko Haram leader resurfaces in video

This screen grab image taken on September 25 from a video released on YouTube by Boko Haram shows the Islamist group’s leader Abubakar Shekau making a statement at an undisclosed location. (Photo: AFP)

The embattled leader of jihadist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, resurfaced in a video posted online Sunday, rejecting assertions by the Nigerian army that he had been seriously wounded.

“You have been spreading in the social media that you injured or killed me,” Shekau said in the 40-minute video released on YouTube and dated September 25.

“Oh tyrants, I’m in a happy state, in good health and in safety.”

The Nigerian army said on August 23 that the longtime militant chief had been seriously wounded in the shoulder in an air raid in which several commanders were killed.

Nigerian authorities have reported him dead several times before, but the army’s latest claim was bolstered when Boko Haram — which pledged allegiance last year to the Islamic State (ISIS) group — released a video on September 13 without Shekau in it.

However, in the video released Sunday, Shekau points to a date on an Islamic calendar corresponding to September 25, 2016.

Speaking in Hausa, Arabic and English and in dialects spoken in northeast Nigeria he appeared to be in good physical health.

He used the video to issue threats against President Muhammadu Buhari, who appealed to the United Nations this week for help in negotiating the release of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by the militants more than two years ago.

“If you want your girls, bring back our brethren,” Shekau says. Boko Haram, which has killed at least 20,000 people since 2009 in its quest for a hardline Islamist state in northeast Nigeria, has been in the grip of a power struggle since late last year.