BREAKING NEWS: Boko Haram release chilling videos of missing Nigerian schoolgirls and reveal they have all been forced to convert to Islam and will only be released if Islamist prisoners are freed
- The schoolgirls captured by Boko Haram have been paraded on video
- More than 200 girls have been abducted by Islamist militants Boko Haram
- Governor of state where they were seized claims to know where they are
- Kashim Shettima said he'd received reports of sightings of the girls
- Archbishop of Canterbury calls for negotiations with the terrorist group
The schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamic militant group Boko Haram have been paraded on video.
The terror group said all of them had been converted to Islam while being held and all were shown wearing headscarfs.
The group's leader said that it will release them in exchange for militant prisoners being freed.
Chilling: The schoolgirls were paraded on video by Boko Haram
Captured: The video shows the girls wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location
Deal: Boko Haram said the schoolgirls would not be released until all militant prisoners were freed
Extremist group Boko Haram seized 276 girls who
were taking exams at a school in Borno's north-eastern village of Chibok
on April 14
The flamboyant leader of the terror group addresses the camera, offering Nigerian authorities a deal
Abubakar Shekau said that the girls would never be released unless there is an exchange with prisoners
Some girls on the 17-minute-long video, which was obtained by news agency AFP, spoke to camera, and looked extremely nervous.
The girls recite Islamic prayers during the clip as they sit in a group in a wooded area.
The video, which appeared to show around 130 girls, was aired after the governor
of the Nigerian state from where the schoolgirls were kidnapped
said that he knew where some of them are being held.
Kashim Shettima, the Governor of
Borno, said that he’d received reports of sightings of the girls and had
passed on this information to the military.
Extremist
group Boko Haram seized 276 girls who were taking exams at a school in
Borno's north-eastern village of Chibok on April 14. Some managed to
escape, but around 200 remain missing.
Mr Shettima told the BBC:
‘We've got
reports of them being sighted in some locations – which we have conveyed
to the relevant military authorities, for them to cross-check, verify
and get additional information on the accurate location of the
daughters.’
His comments
came as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, called for
negotiations with the terrorist group over the fate of the missing
girls.
The Archbishop, who
has acted as a hostage negotiator in Nigeria on behalf of the Church in
the past, said the girls were at ‘colossal’ risk.
‘They
are in the hands of a very disparate group which is extremely
irrational and difficult to deal with – and utterly merciless,’ he told
BBC Radio Four’s The World This Weekend programme.
Borno state Governor Kashim Shettima said that
he'd received reports of sightings of schoolgirls kidnapped by extremist
group Boko Haram
Talks: The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has called for negotiations with Boko Haram
Support: David Cameron and CNN's Christiane Amanpour with the Twitter campaign's hashtag
A map showing the recent Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria over the past month
Michelle Obama shared this photo of herself
along with the caption 'Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls
and their families'
The
Archbishop said he had negotiated in the past with a predecessor group
of Boko Haram and suggested it might be ‘possible’ to strike a deal –
although he warned it was ‘questionable’ who was in charge of the group.
He
added: ‘You have a very, very difficult inner core (of Boko Haram) and I
think negotiations there are extremely complicated, though it needs to
be tried.
'And then it goes
out and out in different layers of commitment and understanding and
involvement. There needs to be active negotiation and contact with all
those different layers.’
The
Archbishop leads the Anglican communion worldwide, which has about 18
million members in Nigeria, making it the second largest Christian
church.
Amy Poehler (right) and Malala Yousafzai (left) tweeted their support for the Bring Back Our Girls campaign
Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron has joined a Twitter campaign aimed at encouraging the return of the schoolgirls.
The
PM followed Michelle Obama and celebrities including Cara Delevingne by
holding up a sign saying #Bring Back Our Girls as he appeared on the
Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning.
Mr Cameron said the government would do ‘what we can’ to rescue more than 200 girls abducted by Islamist militants Boko Haram.
Hilary Clinton was among those who tweeted in
support of the campaign, which encourages military intervention to
recover the girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram rebels on April 14
But he indicated military action was not imminent, saying Britain cannot just ‘pile in and do whatever we’d like’.
Mr
Cameron said he had spoken to Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan to
offer assistance and confirmed counter-terrorism and intelligence
experts are on the ground with the Americans.
‘We stand ready to do anything more that the Nigerians would want,’ he said.
But
he also pointed out the practical difficulties of any rescue operation.
‘It’s immensely complicated because they are probably in this deep area
of jungle that is three times the size of Wales,’ he said.
The
Twitter campaign yesterday drew support from the Pope, who wrote on the
site: ‘Let us all join in prayer for the immediate release of the
schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria. #BringBackOurGirls.’
Christiane Amanpour, a reporter with CNN, asked the PM to join the campaign as she sat with him on the sofa.
She
praised the campaign which she said was ‘really getting to the people
in Nigeria’ but said she worried its bubble might burst with nothing
concrete having been done.
There
are fears that the schoolgirls have been split up into different
groups, taken across the border into neighbouring countries and may be
sold on as sex slaves.
Yesterday,
amid further kidnappings and a bomb attack on a bridge, one teenage
girl who escaped from the group said the kidnapping was ‘too terrifying
for words.’
Science student Sarah Lawan, 19, described how the girls were taken from their school before dawn and forced into a truck.
When they got down she and a friend ran off.
Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram said last week he would sell the remaining captives as slaves for as little as £7.
Boko
Haram has killed more than 1,500 people this year as it steps up its
campaign of violence. The name of the groups means ‘Western education is
forbidden’.
Mrs Obama said she and the President were ‘outraged and heartbroken’ over the abduction.
‘In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters,’ she said, referring to Malia, 15, and Sasha, 12.
‘We see their hopes, their dreams and we can only imagine the anguish their parents are feeling right now.’
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan is under intense pressure to act, as he faces a growing threat from militants.
Demonstration:
Women protest outside Nigeria's parliament in Abuja, trying to prompt
officials to bring back the schoolgirls abducted by Islamist militants,
Boko Haram
Anger: Another woman holds a placard at a demonstration in Lagos, Nigeria, pleading for the return of the kidnapped children
Militant:
The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, vows to sell the hundreds of
schoolgirls kidnapped in northern Nigeria for as little as £7 during a
video message
Yesterday Boko Haram was blamed for a bridge blowing up and for further kidnappings.
Last week the Mail revealed British Special Forces were on standby to help rescue the girls.
That was despite resistance among senior military personnel to putting boots on the ground.
Who are Boko Haram? Insight into the Nigerian terror group
Boko
Haram was founded in 2002 by Mohammed Yusuf – but it didn’t gain
worldwide notoriety until it began a violent insurgency in earnest in
2009.
Ultimately, the group wants Nigeria to become an Islamic state.
Since
mid-2009 it has killed thousands and has destabilised swathes of the
northeast of Nigeria, as well as neighbours Cameroon and Niger.
Its name means ‘Western education is forbidden’ – and it’s the country’s school system that in the main fuels its anger.
Women sit at Gamboru central market in
northeastern Nigeria on Monday, burnt by suspected Boko Haram insurgents
during the May 5 attack
But the group has murdered people –including Muslims - for merely speaking out against it.
Yusuf
established an Islamic school and mosque when he established the group,
which proved popular with many poor Muslim families.
He
was killed by Nigerian security forces in 2009, but rather than weaken
the group, it re-emerged with increased ferocity under the leadership of
Abubakar Shekau.
It has
bombed churches, barracks and even the UN headquarters and ruthlessly
gunned down those who criticise it, typically using gunmen on the back
of motorbikes.
President
Goodluck Jonathan became so alarmed at the chaos the group was spreading
that in 2013 he declared a state of emergency in the areas where it was
most active – Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
The Nigerian military has been fairly ineffective against the heavily armed group.
A
lack of investment in training, failure to maintain equipment and
dwindling cooperation with Western forces has damaged Nigeria's armed
services, while in Boko Haram they face an increasingly well-armed,
determined foe.
The
militants know the military's limitations. A police source said a
fighter jet flew over the market town of Gamburu last Monday as a group
of gunmen killed at least 125, but the killers didn't flinch, knowing
they could not be targeted while scattered in a densely populated area.
‘In
a typical unit, Boko Haram has between 300 and 500 fighters. It's not a
guerrilla force that you can fight half heartedly,’ said Jacob Zenn, a
Boko Haram expert at U.S. counter-terrorism institution CTC Sentinel.
‘It's snowballing. It's getting more weapons, more recruits, their power
is increasing every day.’
On February 12 dozens of fighters loyal to Boko Haram attacked a remote military outpost in the Gwoza hills.
A
security source with knowledge of the assault said they came in Hilux
tracks with mounted machine guns and showered the camp with gunfire.
Boko
Haram's fighters had little cover and were easily picked off - 50 of
them died against nine Nigerian troops - but they still managed to make
off with the base's entire armoury stockpile of 200 mortar bombs, 50
rocket-propelled grenades and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, the
source said.
Their
ability to dart over the border into Cameroon, whose own security
forces have shown little appetite for taking them on, gives the
militants an added advantage.
Ethnic and religious divisions within the military have also bred some collusion with Boko Haram, sources say.
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