UN SG condemns Boko Haram for Chad attacks News
UN SG condemns Boko Haram for Chad attacks

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] condemned [press release] Boko Haram on Sunday for the group’s alleged involvement in a triple suicide attack on the Chadian island of Koulfoua on Lake Chad Saturday that left more than 30 dead and injured over 130. The attack [Al Jazeera report] targeted a busy market and was carried out by at least three female suicide bombers. Two blasts came from the center of the market and a third from the street. Although Boko Haram’s role in the attack is yet unconfirmed, the group has previously attacked targets on the islands of Lake Chad, which is divided by the borders of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. The recent attacks are believed to be in retaliation for the Chadian Army and a regional force’s recent operations against the jihadi group. Boko Haram’s use of girls and women in suicide bombings [Guardian report] raises fears that it is using victims of kidnapping for their operations.

The militant Islamic group Boko Haram [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive], whose name means “Western education is a sin,” has been fighting to overthrow the Nigerian government in the interest of creating an Islamist state. Last month, the Secretary-General condemned [JURIST report] yet another attack by Boko Haram in Nigeria that left 30 dead and approximately 80 injured. In April the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein [official profile], reported [JURIST report] that Boko Haram militants in Nigeria have been murdering women and girls previously taken captive by the group. The group has been increasing the intensity and frequency of its attacks [JURIST report] ever since it lost most of the territory it overtook earlier this year to the Nigerian army. Most of these attacks have centered around markets, bus stations, places of worship and hit-and-run attacks on villages.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.