According to Human Rights Watch: "Baba Fugu Mohammed, the 72-year-old father-in-law of Boko Haram’s leader Mohammed Yusuf, turned himself in to the police on the morning of July 31, 2009, on his lawyer’s advice, after he heard the police wanted to speak with him. A week before the violence exploded in July 2009, Baba Fugu Mohammed’s son, on his father’s behalf, had sent a letter to the Borno State governor warning that Yusuf was preparing to launch a retaliatory “offensive attack” on police and government targets. Human Rights Watch interviewed a former employee of Baba Fugu Mohammed who was stopped at a security checkpoint in front of police headquarters the morning of July 31. As the police searched his vehicle, he said he witnessed a mobile police officer shoot Baba Fugu Mohammed and three other men at close range by the front gate: I saw the police taking Baba Fugu out of the police headquarters with three others. He was wearing a black kaftan. I didn’t recognize the others. One was wearing a white jalabiya [robe]. The other two had on brown kaftans. They were with many mobile police—black and green uniforms. The police told the three to lie down. They lay down in the flower bed just in front of the ATM machine. One mobile police then shot them. The gunshots were too many so everybody was afraid. I got in my car and left." ^[+]