This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• Abubekar Shekau, the purported leader of Boko Haram, has claimed the Baga attacks in a video statement.
• A German man kidnapped by Boko Haram last July has been released.
• The senate in the Democratic Republic of Congo has amended a bill requiring a census before presidential elections after four days of violent protest across the country. The bill was seen as a way for current president Joseph Kabila to stay in office longer.
• The UN is being urged to set up an international court to prosecute perpetrators of atrocity on both sides of the conflict in the Central African Republic.
• Xenophobia and community tensions in Soweto, South Africa lead to rioting, looting of foreign-owned businesses, the deaths of two teenagers and 121 arrests. 
• Peace talks in Libya have been suspended after a rival parliament accused the officially-recognized government of being responsible for new violence.
• Tunisian blogger Yassine Ayari was sentenced to a year in prison for defaming the army.
• The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of July and August of 2014.
• Less than $100 million of the pledged $5.4 billion in reconstruction aid for Gaza has been paid, which will force the UNRWA to shutter a key program.
• In a break with Netanyahu, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, has warned the US that an Iran sanctions bill could ruin nuclear negotiations.
• American and Iranian officials will hold talks in Zurich today and tomorrow.
• An Israeli airstrike in southern Syria killed an Iranian general. In response, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has threatened Israel with “destructive thunderbolts.”
• The scheduled flogging of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been postponed a second time.
• King Abdullah Abdullaziz of Saudi Arabia has died at 90 after a decade of ruling. He is succeeded by his 79-year-old half-brother Salman.
• Yemen’s president Abdu Rabu Mansour Haddi and his cabinet stepped down after reaching an agreement with the Houthi rebels who had stormed the presidential palace on Tuesday.
• The chaos in Yemen means that the ban on returning Guantánamo detainees is back in effect and complicates the war on terror.
• The US ambassador in Baghdad claimed that half of the Islamic State’s leadership had been killed by airstrikes. 
• The Islamic State released a video threatening the lives of two Japanese hostages and demanding a ransom. The deadline for payment expired today and the terror group has posted a statement saying that a “countdown has begun.”
• The group has reportedly executed “scores” of people in Iraq this month, including two men accused of being gay who were thrown from a building and four doctors in Mosul killed for refusing to treat Islamic State fighters.
• Kurds claim success in ejecting the Islamic State from a large swath of northern Iraq and aim to cut off the group’s supply lines.
• Canadian soldiers had an exchange of fire with fighters from the Islamic State last week.
• Bahraini activist Nabil Rajab has been sentenced to six months in jail for an offensive tweet.
• Assessing the Islamic State’s prospects in Afghanistan.
• Abdul Rashid Dostum, former warlord and current vice president of Afghanistan, seeks to expand his influence. 
• Choosing a cabinet in Afghanistan is a complicated and dramatic political process.
• A British soldier’s drawings of frontline Afghanistan.
• Violence threatens attempts at peace in Ukraine: a shelling at a bus stop in Donetsk killed 13 and the Ukrainian army lost its control of the airport.
• American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine in spring to train the Ukrainian National Guard.
• Prisoners in eastern Ukraine remain in limbo.
• Putin’s inner circle is reportedly shrinking as he grows wary of wealthy former allies who are being hurt by sanctions.
• A Russian soldier pleaded guilty to charges leveled by Armenian prosecutors following a January 12th assault that killed a family of seven in Gyumri, Armenia.
• France and Germany are demanding assistance from US tech companies in policing terrorism.
• New York Times reporters trace the path of radicalization for the Kouachi brothers.
• Austria’s first trial of an alleged fighter for the Islamic State is underway.
• The Chilcot Inquiry, a six-year British investigation into the 2003 invasion of Iraq, will not be published until after elections.
• A former Guatemalan police official was convicted of crimes against humanity and homicide for his role in the 1980 siege of the Spanish embassy that left 37 dead.
• Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman died the day before he was set to offer testimony on the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, which he had connected back to Iran and Hezbollah. The scene appeared as if Nisman committed suicide, but that is a subject of serious debate.
• Current Guantánamo inmate Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s 2005 memoir has finally been published. Guantánamo Diary, which is also available in its original form online at The Guardian, chronicles the Mauritanian’s arrest and torture after 9/11. In 2010 a judge ordered his release, yet he remains in the prison. (My review of it.)
• The commander of the naval base at Guantánamo has been reassigned to headquarters amid a death probe of a commissary worker on the base.
• Ali Al-Marri, a former Al-Qaeda operative, has been released from prison in Colorado and returned home to Qatar. Some thoughts on his case at Lawfare and at Just Security.
• The Daily Beast profiles Saddiq al-Abbadi, one of two Yemeni men on trial for terrorism charges in US court.
• Jameel Jaffer challenges the Obama administrations argument that the torture photos should not be released because of their potential for provocation.
• A classified internal CIA report known as the Panetta Review reportedly found that the agency had repeatedly exaggerated the intelligence value of information obtained through torture years before the release of the Senate report.
• Senator Richard Burr, the new Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, is asking the White House to return all copies of the full 6900-page torture report (only the executive summary was released in 2014) to prevent it from being subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
• The CIA leak trial of Jeffrey Sterling is drawing to a close.
• In 2014, nearly every US weapons program tested had “significant vulnerabilities" to cyberattack.
• American journalist Barrett Brown was sentenced on Thursday to 63 months and will have to pay $890,000 in restitution to Stratfor. Brown’s case is a twisted ordeal that began with his arrest for linking to hacked material on a public chatroom. His sentence was ultimately for charges of aiding and abetting and obstruction of justice.

Photo: Donetsk, Ukraine. A separatist shelters himself from the shelling in the Kievsky district. Manu Brabo/AP.