Chilling threats as jihadis parade schoolgirl hostages
Christians seized two years ago seen in terror group’s video
A NIGERIAN Islamist group has released a video showing dozens of the 276 schoolgirls it kidnapped two years ago.
Claiming that some of the hostages have been killed in air strikes by the country’s military, Boko Haram demanded the release of detained militants in return for the girls’ freedom.
In the 11-minute video posted on YouTube, a masked gunman stands in front of around 50 girls huddled on the ground or standing in the background. He says 40 of the captives have been married, and one girl is seen cradling a baby.
The jihadist group kidnapped 276 final-year schoolgirls – many of them Christian – from the northern Nigerian town of Chibok in April 2014, provoking worldwide outrage.
Dozens escaped in the first 48 hours, and one girl was found on the fringe of a forest earlier this year, telling rescuers she had been led to freedom by her Boko Haram ‘husband’, but 218 remain unaccounted for.
The gunman in yesterday’s video, speaking in the Hausa language, said on camera: ‘If our members in detention are not freed, let the government and parents of the Chibok girls know that they will never find these girls again.’
He said a number of the girls had been wounded, some suffering life-threatening injuries.
During a staged interview with one girl, who calls herself Maida Yakubu, some of the hostages appear to dab their eyes as she describes the group’s desperate situation.
She said: ‘We are suffering here, the aircraft has come to bombard us and killed many of us. Some are wounded.
‘Every day we are in pain and suffering, so are our babies. Some of our husbands that we married also are injured, some dead. No one cares for us.’
Maida’s mother, Esther, is one of several parents of Chibok girls who recently published open letters to their daughters detailing the pain they feel at their children’s absence and their hopes for the future.
The video ends with footage of bodies, said to be the victims of air strikes, lying on the ground at another location.
It emerged just days after the West African terror group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, denied claims he had been replaced as the leader of the Islamic militants.
Boko Haram, whose name translates as ‘Western education is forbidden’, has waged a violent campaign in northern Nigeria for years in an attempt to bring about Islamic rule. A faction recently pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
Although Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari has said the group is ‘technically defeated’, his government has failed to find the kidnapped girls, an enduring political embarrassment that highlights Boko Haram’s continued presence in the region.
‘We are in pain and suffering’