ABUJA, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Nigerian prosecutors on Thursday accused five suspected Islamist militants of preparing to attack government targets and said three of them had received training at a "terrorist camp" in Algeria. The men were arrested earlier this month in northern Nigeria by the State Security Services (SSS), a secret police force. One of the charges filed on Thursday said three of the men had trained, between 2005 and August 2007, in Algeria with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) "with intent to attack government facilities and cause insurrection in Nigeria". Since January, the GSPC has renamed itself al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb after winning approval from Osama bin Laden to brand itself as an al Qaeda affiliate. It has carried out a series of high-profile urban bombings. The U.S. embassy warned in September that Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, was at risk of "terrorist attack", and bin Laden once named the country as ripe for jihad, but Nigeria has yet to see any attack in the style of al Qaeda. The charge sheet said the five men, all in their early 30s, "did conspire to commit terrorist acts". One of the charges said they had "one AK47 rifle, two live ammunitions, seven dynamites, fertiliser (urea) and 11 explosives devices with intent to use same to attack government facilities and installations in Lagos and Ibadan". Two of the men were also accused of involvement in the fatal shooting of a man in February 2005. No details of the incident were given, nor was any explanation provided about whether it had any connection with the other charges. The case was adjourned until Nov. 29, when the men would take a plea. Police and the secretive SSS have made sporadic arrests of suspected jihadists for some years and trials have been launched but there has been no conviction, and no conclusive evidence of al Qaeda's presence in Nigeria has been made public. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is divided about equally between Christians and Muslims. The two communities usually live side by side peacefully but there are occasional outbreaks of religious violence. Tensions worsened in the northern part of the country, which is predominantly Muslim, after 12 state governments introduced a stricter enforcement of sharia law in 2000, alienating sizeable Christian minorities. Thousands were killed in sporadic riots. Against this backdrop, some Western diplomats and analysts have expressed concerns that Nigeria could become a target for militant Islamists. The U.S embassy said in an official warning to American residents of Nigeria in September that unspecified targets for attack included Western interests. (Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Editing by Giles Elgood)
