CORRECT BREAKING GIST: Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau Appears in New Video, Debunks Death Claims

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has dismissed Nigerian military claims of his death in a new video obtained by AFP on Thursday, today.Nigeria’s military said last week that Shekau was dead and that a man who had been posing as the group’s leader in the videos had been shot dead after fighting with troops in the far northeast. But in the 36 minute video obtained by AFP, Abubakar says he’s very much alive and that the militants has implemented strict Islamic law in captured towns.“Here I am, alive. I will only die the day Allah takes my breath,”Shekau said, adding that his group was “running our… Islamic caliphate” and administering sharia punishments.”“It is propaganda that is prevalent. I have one soul. I’m an Islamic student.“I’m the Islamic student whose seminary you burnt… I’m not dead,”he added, apparently referring to the destruction of the group’s mosque in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, in 2009.There have been two previous claims by Nigeria’s security forces that Shekau was dead — once in 2009 during unrest in Maiduguri — and again in 2013.Following each previous claim Boko Haram has issued denials in video messages. Elsewhere in the new video, the militant leader said the group had implemented strict Islamic law in the towns that it had captured in recent weeks.“We are running our caliphate, our Islamic caliphate. We follow the Koran… We now practise the injunctions of the Koran in the land ofAllah,”he said.The group also claimed to have shot down a Nigerian air force jet that went missing nearly three weeks ago.