A 25 year-old Muslim from Ghana has traveled to an Islamic State
training camp, becoming the first known recruit from the West African
nation to join the militant group, his family said on Tuesday.
About one third of Ghana’s population of 27 million are Muslims.
They have long co-existed peacefully with the Christian majority and
have so far apparently avoided the influence of the kinds of radical
Islam that have taken root in some of the country’s neighbours.
Nazir Alema, a university graduate from Accra, had initially told his
parents he was traveling to Prestea, a mining town in the country’s
west.
“Two weeks later on August 16, we got a message on social media from
him saying he was at a training ground to join the IS group in an
unknown country,” his brother, Kabiru Alema, said.
Thousands of foreigners from more than 80 nations have joined the
ranks of Islamic State and other radical groups in Syria and Iraq.
Mr. Alema said his brother had not expressed any particular interest in radical Islam.
Mr, Alema quoted his brother as saying that by joining Islamic State
he was obeying a call from Allah to abandon what he called `the corrupt
system’.
“He said he loves us so much and that we should forgive him for not
making his intentions known to us from the beginning,” Mr. Alema said.
The Ghanaian government was not immediately available for comment.
Boko Haram, West Africa’s deadliest Islamist militant group, swore allegiance to IS leader, Abu al-Baghdadi in March.
Source: premium times
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