ICC Note: Nigeria was yesterday elected to a seat at the UN Security Council, despite its inability to successfully counter the Islamist insurgency in the country. The Nigerian government’s recent attempts in the media to play down the nature and extent that Christians are persecuted in the country is again exhibited in the report by Morning Star News, where the massacre of  a Christian family was attributed to cattle rustling gone awry… despite the fact that the family owned no cattle. 
10/18/2013 Nigeria (Morning Star News) – Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 10 Christians in three villages in this area in Plateau state last week in what authorities called a cattle-rustling attempt, but a visit to the home where eight members of one family were killed revealed the presence of no cows.
A state official was quick to deny that the attack was rooted in the ethno-religious violence that has convulsed the state, and military officials asserted that security forces recovered 20 cows and killed five of the rustlers in thwarting an attempted theft, but a Morning Star News reporter found no evidence of cattle ownership at the home in Kukyek village where eight family members were slain in the wee hours of Oct. 10.
The ethnic Fulani Muslims also attacked the villages of Zatsitsa-Kudeson and Chehwyanang, also in the Bakin Kogi Foron area of Barkin Ladi Local Government Area in central Nigeria, killing two other Christians, sources said. Nigerian newspaper reports erroneously identifying the names of villages and victims and describing the raid as an incident of “cattle rustling” in which residents supposedly engaged the assailants in gun-battle, were speculative and not based on facts obtained first-hand, local Christians told Morning Star News.
Among the eight killed in Kukyek by heavily armed, ethnic Fulani Muslims were two girls, 10-year-old Dorothy Luka Kpagyang and 6-year-old Hope Luka Kpagyang, their uncle, Daniel Yohanna Kpagyang, told Morning Star News. Also shot to death in their home were his son, father, mother and brother, the 48-year-old Kpagyang said.
“These Muslim Fulani herdsmen attacking Christians should know that death is not an exclusive preserve for Christians,” Kpagyang said. “They too will die one day and will stand before the almighty God to account for their crimes against the innocent Christians they attack and kill at will. My advice to them is that they need to repent of these crimes against the church and embrace Jesus, the Christ.”
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[FULL STORY]