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Boko Haram Video Appears to Show Kidnapped Nigerian Girls Praying Nigerian Girls Seen in Video From Militants
(about 7 hours later)
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — A new clue about the fate of hundreds of girls kidnapped by an Islamist extremist group in Nigeria emerged Monday with the release of a video apparently showing many of the girls and new threats to “sell them” and “hold them as slaves” until Boko Haram members are released from prison. MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — The fears have been mounting for weeks: that the girls have been sold, married off, spirited across international borders, and perhaps even killed. Their fate has become the focus of intense international concern, with Michelle Obama holding up a placard appealing for their safe return and governments across the globe pledging to help track them down.
If genuine, it would be the first public glimpse of the girls since they were seized on April 14 from a school in Chibok, an isolated village some 80 miles from this regional capital in Nigeria’s far northeast, where an Islamist insurgency has bedeviled the authorities for years. On Monday came the first hint that many of them may still be alive: a video from Boko Haram, the radical Islamist group that claimed responsibility for kidnapping more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls last month, shows scores of girls, covered from head to toe, stone-faced, somewhere in the pervasive semidesert scrub that covers this arid region.
The video shows dozens of girls dressed in head scarves and long gowns that cover their bodies but reveal their faces. They are praying and seated cross-legged in the type of scrubland that is pervasive in this region, not far from the Sahara Desert. One of the girls is shown reciting the opening of the Quran; three express allegiance to Islam; two say they had converted from Christianity. After weeks of global concern over the girls’ plight, Boko Haram appears to have seized on the international attention and begun to use the girls as bargaining chips in its war with the Nigerian state.
It was impossible to fully authenticate the video, and one parent reached in Chibok said nobody there had seen it because there is no electricity, much less Internet access. “These girls will not leave our hands until you release our brothers in your prison,” Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, warns in the video
The video contains a disjointed, ranting message from Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, in Hausa and Arabic. In it, he acknowledges the worldwide attention the kidnappings have drawn. If genuine, the video would be the first public glimpse of the girls since they were seized on April 14 from the village of Chibok in Nigeria’s far northeast, a region in turmoil for years over an Islamist insurgency.
“Just because we kidnapped these young girls, you are making noise? Allah has blessed most of them with accepting Islam,” he says. “You are making so much noise about Chibok, Chibok, Chibok. Only Allah knows how many women we are holding.” In the message, Mr. Shekau seems almost surprised at the global shock over the mass abduction of schoolgirls, and tries to use it to his advantage.
He repeated the slavery threat he made in a video released a week ago. “There are many verses in the Quran that allows the seizing of slaves. Abduction of slaves is allowed,” he said. “It exists, it exists, yes, it exists.” “Just because we kidnapped these young girls, you are making noise?” Mr. Shekau says in the video. “You are making so much noise about Chibok, Chibok, Chibok.”
The schools in this region had been closed for weeks before the kidnapping because of Boko Haram attacks. But the girls had come back to the Chibok government school to take an exam, and were staying overnight. The Islamists overpowered what little police protection the town had and seized more than 300 girls. About 50 were subsequently able to flee their captors. In a previous video message just last week, Mr. Shekau had treated the girls more as an ideological prize than a negotiating tactic, calling them slaves and threatening to “sell them in the market.”
A worldwide effort has begun to try to rescue them, with the United States, France, Britain and most recently Israel pledging to help. The Nigerian military has waged an aggressive, at times brutal, offensive in the region, but so far it has proved unable to make any advances toward the girls’ recovery. He reiterated the group’s longstanding position that “Western education should end,” and warned that, “Girls, you should go and get married.”
But in Monday’s video, Mr. Shekau apparently offered a hint about what might induce him to release the girls from Boko Haram’s clutches. But in the latest video, Boko Haram’s demands became more focused on its violent struggle with the Nigerian authorities, saying the girls would not be freed until the release of “our brethren that are held all over Nigeria,” Mr. Shekau said.
“We will never release them until our brethren are released,” he said. “Our brethren that are held in Borno in Yobe, in Kano, in Kaduna, in Abuja, in Lagos and Enugu. Our brethren that are held all over Nigeria,” Mr. Shekau said. At one point, he chuckles, waves a stick at the camera, spits out the word “infidel” in Hausa, the dominant language of Nigeria’s north, and promises to “kidnap even Obama.”
The Nigerian government has not acknowledged any negotiation with the group, though one high official in the north has said some type of bargaining appears to be going on. The video offered a fleeting picture of the coerced new life these teenagers, until recently simply high school students who saw their parents every morning, have been thrust into.
The girls chant verses passively. Two hold up the black flag of the Islamists in the background. Three girls are questioned by an off-camera voice. One says she converted to Islam because “Jesus is not the son of God.” Another tells the interviewer in a rote monotone: “I will rebel against my parents. I am grateful to God. I have seen the correct path.”
The interviewer asks if she has been “manhandled,” and she answers, “no.” He asks what she has been eating, and the solemn answer is, rice.
It is unclear whether the Nigerian government, widely criticized for its inability to rescue any of the kidnapped girls, is in negotiations with Boko Haram. A top northern official said over the weekend that the federal authorities in the capital, Abuja, had engaged the services of an “Australian intermediary” to negotiate with the group.
Adding credence to his assertion, the official noted days before the video was released that the group appeared to be seeking a “prisoner exchange.” A government spokesman on Sunday stopped short of an outright denial, saying merely that he was “not aware” of “formal” negotiations.
Still, over the five years of the Boko Haram insurgency, reports of negotiations with the group have frequently trickled out of Abuja, with no clear results. The Nigerian government has continued its aggressive, sometimes brutal, counterinsurgency campaign against the militants, killing many civilians in the process. For its part, Boko Haram has showed little reservation about killing large numbers of civilians, and when it has wanted its prisoners released, it has sometimes simply attacked the prisons where they were held.
Just in March, the government said that Boko Haram carried out an assault on a notorious military detention center where hundreds of suspected extremists were held. Well over 500 people, most of them detainees, were killed in the episode, many by Nigerian security forces who opened fire from a plane and from the ground, local officials said.
In this region, where few aspects of civilian life are fully insulated from the violence, schools had been closed for weeks before the mass kidnapping because of other Boko Haram attacks. But the girls had come back to the Chibok government school to take an exam, and were staying overnight. The Islamists overpowered what little police protection the town possessed, and seized more than 300 girls. About 50 were able to flee their captors. By some counts, close to 300 remain missing.
Chibok is primarily a Christian village, and Mr. Shekau appeared to acknowledge that many of the girls seized were not Muslims. “The girls that have not accepted Islam, they are now gathered in numbers,” he said. “And we treat them well the way the prophet treated the infidels he seized.”
The education commissioner here in Borno state said that he would bring the girls’ parents to the state capital to watch the video on Tuesday, to see if they could identify their daughters. One parent reached in Chibok said that nobody there had seen it because there was no electricity. The chairman of the local government, Bana Lawan, watching the video on Monday said, “this face is familiar to me,” as one of the girls was questioned on the video. But he said it was difficult to identify others because of their extensive clothing.
On Monday, Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said of the video: “We have no reason to question its authenticity. Our intelligence experts are combing through every detail of the video for clues that might help in ongoing efforts to secure the release of the girls.”
The United States is part of a worldwide effort that includes Britain, France and Israel, to try to rescue the girls.
In the past, the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, has remarked that it was not possible to negotiate with the group, suggesting it was too nebulous, erratic and violent an organization to engage with.
The video released Monday reinforced that view, as Mr. Shekau, wearing fatigues and cradling a rifle, stares intently into the camera, makes wild threats, and seems to glory in the worldwide attention the girls’ kidnapping has brought him. He squints and grins, and at times his voice cracks in excitement at his newfound celebrity.
“I don’t follow international law,” he says, as if mocking the world’s outrage at the abduction of the girls. He adds: “There are many verses in the Quran that allows the seizing of slaves. Abduction of slaves is allowed.”