A former leader of a Nigerian Islamic sect behind an uprising last year which killed hundreds of people issued a statement expressing solidarity with al Qaeda and threatening the United States. A five-day uprising by Boko Haram around the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri a year ago killed close to 800 people, as security forces fought days of gun battles to end rioting by sect members, Reuters reports. Boko Haram’s views are not espoused by the majority of Nigeria’s Muslim population, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, and there has been little published evidence of well-established links between Nigerian militants and al Qaeda.