Militants offer to swap 200 for their leaders
Nigeria’s Boko Haram offers to free 200 young women and girls kidnapped in exchange for the release of militant leaders.
LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremists are offering to free more than 200 young women and girls kidnapped from a boarding school in the town of Chibok in exchange for the release of militant leaders held by the government, according to a human rights activist.
The activist said Boko Haram’s current offer is limited to the girls from the school in northeastern Nigeria whose mass abduction in April 2014 ignited worldwide outrage and a campaign to “Bring Back Our Girls” that stretched to the White House.
The new initiative reopens an offer made last year to the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan to release the 219 students in exchange for 16 Boko
Haram detainees, the activist said. The man, who was involved in negotiations with Boko Haram last year and is close to current negotiators, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
Fred Eno, an apolitical Nigerian who has been negotiating with Boko Haram for more than a year, said that “another window of opportunity opened” in the last few days.
He said the recent slew of Boko Haram slayings — some 350 people killed in the past nine days — is consistent with past ratcheting up of violence as the militants seek a stronger negotiating position.
Eno said the 5-week-old administration of President Muhammadu Buhari offers “a clean slate” to bring the militants back to negotiations that had become poisoned by the different security agencies and their advice to Jonathan.
Two months of talks last year led government representatives and Eno to travel in September to a northeastern town where the prisoner exchange was to take place, only to be stymied by the Department for State Service intelligence agency, the activist said. At the last minute, the agency said it was holding only four of the militants sought by Boko Haram, the activist said
It is not known how many Boko Haram suspects are detained by Nigeria’s intelligence agency.
Thousands of suspects have died in custody, and some detainees wanted by Boko Haram may be among them.
Amnesty International alleges that 8,000 detainees have died in military custody — some have been shot, some have died from untreated injuries due to torture, and some have died from starvation and other harsh treatment.