The leader of an Islamist militant group which has abducted hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls today vowed to sell them as sex slaves despite international outrage at the kidnappings.
Abubakar Shekau, the head of Nigerian extremists Boko Haram, said he would 'sell on the market' more than 270 girls captured by his fighters last month.
The group – whose name means 'western education is forbidden' – snatched the children during a raid in the village of Chibok in northeast Nigeria last month, the French news agency AFP reported, citing a video it had obtained.
In the video, Shekau declares: 'I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah.'
He is seen dressed in combat fatigues standing in front of an armoured personnel carrier and two pick-up trucks mounted with sub-machine guns.
His message comes after former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now a UN special envoy on education, led calls for Western governments including Britain to assist with their rescue.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the British government is in talks with their Nigerian couinterparts and 'security services' but declined to say if that might include special forces such as the SAS, according to the Daily Telegraph.
US Secretary of State John Kerry over the weekend also promised help.
'The kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime and we will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice,' he said.
The brazenness and sheer brutality of the school attack has shocked Nigerians, who had been growing accustomed to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north.
Boko Haram are now seen as the main security threat to Africa's leading energy producer and is growing bolder and extending its reach.
In the latest video, the images are blurry at times, but zoom in to Shekau, who speaks in the local Hausa language and Arabic as well as English.
Six armed men stand beside him with their faces covered.
For the first 14 minutes, he takes a swipe at democracy, Western education, efforts for Muslims and Christians to live in peace and rails against non-believers in Islam.
'I abducted a girl at a Western education school and you are disturbed. I said Western education should end.
'Western education should end. Girls, you should go and get married,' he said.
'I will repeat this: Western education should fold up. I abducted your girls.'
'I will sell them in the market, by Allah,' Shekau said, claiming his group was holding the girls as 'slaves'.
'I will marry off a woman at the age of 12. I will marry off a girl at the age of nine,' he said elsewhere in the video.
Unconfirmed reports from local leaders in Chibok suggested that the girls had been taken across Nigeria's borders with Chad and Cameroon and sold as brides for as little as $12.
The kidnapping occurred the same day as a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, that killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja and marked the first attack on the capital in two years.
The militants repeated that bomb attack more than two weeks later in almost exactly the same spot, killing 19 people and wounding 34 in the suburb of Nyanya.
The girls' abductions have been hugely embarrassing for the government and threaten to distract attention from its first hosting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa, this week.
The apparent powerlessness of the military to prevent the attack or find the girls in three weeks has triggered anger and protests in the northeast and in Abuja.
Last month, authorities arrested a leader of a protest in Abuja that had called on them to do more to find the girls. The arrest has further fuelled outrage against the security forces.
In a televised 'media chat', President Jonathan pledged that the girls would soon be found and released, but also admitted he had no clue where they were.
With outrage growing over the failure to rescue the girls, thousands of Nigerians took to the streets of the country’s largest city Lagos on Thursday to protest at their government’s inability to find the victims.
Protesters around the world have also harnessed the power of social media using hashtags including #BringBackOurGirls and #BringBackOurDaughters to demand that more is done.
Celebrities including singers Mary J Blige, Janelle Monae and Deborah Cox have retweeted the call for more to be done to rescue the school girls.
‘If 230 girls can go missing for this long and nobody knows how to find them, then something's very wrong with our country,’ said Tokumbo Adebanjo, 45, a travel agent and mother.
‘I feel the pain of those other mothers. Obviously the government are not doing their job.’
President Goodluck Jonathan has said security forces are doing all they can to find the girls and the Associated Press has reported that his government is in negotiations with the terrorists who are demanding an unspecified ransom for the students' release.
News of negotiations comes as parents had claimed the girls were being sold into marriage to Boko Haram militants.
The students are being paid 2,000 naira ($12) to marry the fighters, Halite Aliyu of the Borno-Yobe People's Forum told The Associated Press.
She said the parents' information about mass weddings is coming from villagers in the Sambisa Forest, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, where Boko Haram is known to have hideouts.
The girls are between 16 and 18 years old and had been recalled to the school to write a physics exam when they were seized.
About 50 of the kidnapped girls managed to escape from their captors in the first days after their abduction, but some 220 remain missing, according to the principal of the Chibok Girls Secondary School, Asabe Kwambura. Two of the girls have reportedly died from snake bites.
The demonstrators, including pregnant women, relatives of the girls and civil servants, waved banners saying ‘Bring Back Our Girls’, the somber mood of their rally accentuated by torrential rain that drenched everyone.
‘The leaders of both houses said they will do all in their power but we are saying two weeks already have past, we want action now,’ said activist Mercy Asu Abang.
‘We want our girls to come home alive - not in body bags,’ she said.
The demonstrators began their march outside the Hilton Abuja, one of Africa's most expensive hotels, where in a week's time Nigeria will be hosting the World Economic Forum under tight security, to be maintained by 6,000 soldiers.
A senator from the region where the girls were taken has said the government needs to get international help to rescue the girls.
Boko Haram especially opposes the education of women.
Under its version of Sharia law, women should be at home raising children and looking after their husbands, not at school learning to read and write.
Abubakar Shekau, the head of Nigerian extremists Boko Haram, said he would 'sell on the market' more than 270 girls captured by his fighters last month.
The group – whose name means 'western education is forbidden' – snatched the children during a raid in the village of Chibok in northeast Nigeria last month, the French news agency AFP reported, citing a video it had obtained.
In the video, Shekau declares: 'I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah.'
He is seen dressed in combat fatigues standing in front of an armoured personnel carrier and two pick-up trucks mounted with sub-machine guns.
His message comes after former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now a UN special envoy on education, led calls for Western governments including Britain to assist with their rescue.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the British government is in talks with their Nigerian couinterparts and 'security services' but declined to say if that might include special forces such as the SAS, according to the Daily Telegraph.
US Secretary of State John Kerry over the weekend also promised help.
'The kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime and we will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice,' he said.
The brazenness and sheer brutality of the school attack has shocked Nigerians, who had been growing accustomed to hearing about atrocities in an increasingly bloody five-year-old Islamist insurgency in the north.
Boko Haram are now seen as the main security threat to Africa's leading energy producer and is growing bolder and extending its reach.
In the latest video, the images are blurry at times, but zoom in to Shekau, who speaks in the local Hausa language and Arabic as well as English.
Six armed men stand beside him with their faces covered.
For the first 14 minutes, he takes a swipe at democracy, Western education, efforts for Muslims and Christians to live in peace and rails against non-believers in Islam.
'I abducted a girl at a Western education school and you are disturbed. I said Western education should end.
'Western education should end. Girls, you should go and get married,' he said.
'I will repeat this: Western education should fold up. I abducted your girls.'
'I will sell them in the market, by Allah,' Shekau said, claiming his group was holding the girls as 'slaves'.
'I will marry off a woman at the age of 12. I will marry off a girl at the age of nine,' he said elsewhere in the video.
Unconfirmed reports from local leaders in Chibok suggested that the girls had been taken across Nigeria's borders with Chad and Cameroon and sold as brides for as little as $12.
The kidnapping occurred the same day as a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, that killed 75 people on the edge of Abuja and marked the first attack on the capital in two years.
The militants repeated that bomb attack more than two weeks later in almost exactly the same spot, killing 19 people and wounding 34 in the suburb of Nyanya.
The girls' abductions have been hugely embarrassing for the government and threaten to distract attention from its first hosting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa, this week.
The apparent powerlessness of the military to prevent the attack or find the girls in three weeks has triggered anger and protests in the northeast and in Abuja.
Last month, authorities arrested a leader of a protest in Abuja that had called on them to do more to find the girls. The arrest has further fuelled outrage against the security forces.
In a televised 'media chat', President Jonathan pledged that the girls would soon be found and released, but also admitted he had no clue where they were.
With outrage growing over the failure to rescue the girls, thousands of Nigerians took to the streets of the country’s largest city Lagos on Thursday to protest at their government’s inability to find the victims.
Protesters around the world have also harnessed the power of social media using hashtags including #BringBackOurGirls and #BringBackOurDaughters to demand that more is done.
Celebrities including singers Mary J Blige, Janelle Monae and Deborah Cox have retweeted the call for more to be done to rescue the school girls.
‘If 230 girls can go missing for this long and nobody knows how to find them, then something's very wrong with our country,’ said Tokumbo Adebanjo, 45, a travel agent and mother.
‘I feel the pain of those other mothers. Obviously the government are not doing their job.’
President Goodluck Jonathan has said security forces are doing all they can to find the girls and the Associated Press has reported that his government is in negotiations with the terrorists who are demanding an unspecified ransom for the students' release.
News of negotiations comes as parents had claimed the girls were being sold into marriage to Boko Haram militants.
The students are being paid 2,000 naira ($12) to marry the fighters, Halite Aliyu of the Borno-Yobe People's Forum told The Associated Press.
She said the parents' information about mass weddings is coming from villagers in the Sambisa Forest, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, where Boko Haram is known to have hideouts.
The girls are between 16 and 18 years old and had been recalled to the school to write a physics exam when they were seized.
About 50 of the kidnapped girls managed to escape from their captors in the first days after their abduction, but some 220 remain missing, according to the principal of the Chibok Girls Secondary School, Asabe Kwambura. Two of the girls have reportedly died from snake bites.
The demonstrators, including pregnant women, relatives of the girls and civil servants, waved banners saying ‘Bring Back Our Girls’, the somber mood of their rally accentuated by torrential rain that drenched everyone.
‘The leaders of both houses said they will do all in their power but we are saying two weeks already have past, we want action now,’ said activist Mercy Asu Abang.
‘We want our girls to come home alive - not in body bags,’ she said.
The demonstrators began their march outside the Hilton Abuja, one of Africa's most expensive hotels, where in a week's time Nigeria will be hosting the World Economic Forum under tight security, to be maintained by 6,000 soldiers.
A senator from the region where the girls were taken has said the government needs to get international help to rescue the girls.
Boko Haram especially opposes the education of women.
Under its version of Sharia law, women should be at home raising children and looking after their husbands, not at school learning to read and write.
Source : DailyMail , Telegraph, SkyNews
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