Agencies

A purported spokesman for Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamists late Monday threatened the group would soon launch attacks on mobile telephone firms for their alleged complicity with security agents.In a phone conference with reporters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, a man who claimed to be Boko Haram spokesman Abul Qaqa said the sect would “soon launch attacks” on mobile phone operators and state-run regulator Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). He accused them of complicity with security agents in bugging the phones of sect members to track them.“We have realised that the mobile phone operators and the NCC have been assisting security agencies in tracking and arresting our members by bugging their lines and and enabling the security agents to locate the position of our members,” he said.Boko Haram has previously used similar conferences with journalists in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, the group’s base, to make public statements.