ISIS: Security men on trail of ex-Chief Justice Uwais’ son

Security agents were last night working frantically to track the whereabouts of a son of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais

who was said to have joined the deadly Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The 41-year old son of the former CJN left home about a month ago with his two wives and has not been seen since.

One of the wives a school principal, and the other also a school administrator both left with their husband without telling their parents.

It was gathered that one of the wives reportedly told her parents she was going to Dubai for two weeks with her husband. Neither the former CJN nor the parents of one of the wives has heard from them since.

Contacted for his comments, the jurist said he had no comments to make on the development.

In a telephone conversation with Vanguard in Abuja, the respected jurist, who was Nigeria’s Chief Justice between 1995 and 2006, neither confirmed nor denied the report published by a United States online medium, The Will, on March 4, 2015.

Reminded that the report had already gone viral, Uwais, who also spearheaded Nigeria’s electoral reforms, said that he had no comment on the matter.

“I don’t want to comment on hearsay,” the former CJN said.

The San Francisco-based news medium had reported that the son of the retired judge, whose name it did not disclose, had joined ISIS after moving from Nigeria with his two wives and children in order to help fight alongside ISIS, which presently controls large territories in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

The medium said that the intelligence report came from Saudi Arabia, one of the over 50 countries alongside the United Nations that has designated ISIS as a terrorist organization.

If proven to be true, this would be the second time a member of a Nigerian elitist family would be linked to a foreign terrorist group.

The first was the notorious underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a member of Al-Qaeda, who is presently serving a life sentence without parole in the United States, who is the youngest son of Katsina-born Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a wealthy Nigerian banker and businessman, who had also served as a federal minister in the 70s.

Sources said that Justice Uwais had been told about the development.

The Nigerian military and its West African allies are presently pre-occupied with defeating the Boko Haram, a Nigerian terrorist group responsible for thousands of brutal killings and deadly bombings in northern Nigeria and border towns in Cameroon and Chad.

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