Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau rejected Nigerian military's allegations of his death in a new video obtained by Agence France-Presse on Thursday. Although the purported leader of Nigeria's Islamist group, who was seen posing as the group's leader in several videos, was announced by the military last week to have been dead, United States security analysts remained skeptical of the credibility of the claim.
"Here I am, alive. I will only die the day Allah takes my breath," Shekau says in the 36-minute video, adding that his group was "running our... Islamic caliphate" and implementing strict Islamic law and punishments in captured towns.
"We follow the Koran... We now practice the injunctions of the Koran in the land of Allah," he says, dressed in combat fatigues and black rubber boots, standing on the back of a pick-up truck and firing an anti-aircraft gun into the air.
Discrediting the allegations last week, Nigeria journalist Ahmad Salkida, who has good contacts within Boko Haram, said on his Twitter account that he had it "on authority that Shekau is well and alive."
In the latest video, images of extreme violence, including lengthy graphic footage of "a man being stoned to death for adultery, another having his right hand cut off at the wrist for theft and a man and a woman receiving 100 lashes for sex out of wedlock" while an audience of men, women and children watch, has been shown, according to AFP.
It also features the wreckage of a Nigerian Air Force jet that disappeared in the northeast on September 11. Although Boko Haram claimed responsibility for shooting down the plane, Nigerian military had denied the claim, BBC News reported.
"Nothing will kill me until my days are over... I'm still alive. Some people asked you if Shekau has two souls. No, I have one soul, by Allah," he said, apparently reading from a script. "It is propaganda that is prevalent. I have one soul. I'm an Islamic student."
Meanwhile, the video does not make it clear where or when it was shot, with Shekau appearing intermittently in separate violent images.
"Boko Haram" means "Western education is forbidden" in Arabic, and the group is known to frequently attack schools and colleges, which it views as a symbol of Western culture.
The terrorist organization gained prominence after their abduction of more than schoolgirls from a boarding school in April made headlines, sparking international outrage, according to BBC News.
