Some of the abducted schools are being raped 15 times a day,those who refused to convert to islam had their throat slashed.
When 100 armed men turned up at a girls’ boarding schoolthey claimed to be Nigerian government troops sent to protect the pupils from marauding terrorists.
Staff took them at their word and it was only when 329 terrified teenagers were ordered out of their beds in the dead of night and herded into Toyota Hilux jeeps that they knew something was wrong.
In fact the soldiers were themselves terrorists from the radical Muslim jihadist group Boko Haram – and they were there to carry out one of worst mass kidnappings in modern history.
Families of the schoolgirls, aged from 15 to 18, are certain their daughters are now being used as sex slaves by an extreme sect that has killed 1,500 people since the start of this year alone.
They are captives in the wild Sambisa Forest in north-east Nigeria where Boko Haram has a heavily armed camp of bunkers, tunnels, ramshackle buildings and tents.
One girl who recently escaped following an earlier kidnapping said she was prized as a terror leader’s wife because she had been a virgin. She said young female captives were raped up to 15 times a day, forced to convert to Islam and had their throats cut if they refused.
Since the school abductions on April 14, news has filtered back of mass marriages with girls forcibly shared out as brides. Boko Haram has warned that any attempt to find them will lead to their execution.
Under President Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian government appears to have done little except issue an entirely false claim that most of the girls had been rescued by defence forces. Now as an international outcry builds,former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is travelling to Nigeria on Tuesday in his role as the UN’s special adviser on girls’ education.
His aim is to secure the pupils’ release. But with stories of many already trafficked into neighbouring Chad and Cameroon for just 2,000 nira (£7.50) campaigners fear that without urgent action they will never be seen again.
“It is a very bad situation for those girls,” says Mma Odi, executive director of the Nigerian charity Baobab Women’s Human Rights.
“The men went to the school for no other reason than to make them their sex objects. The men will have reduced them to sex slaves, raping them over and over again. And any girl who tries to resist will be shot by them. They have no conscience.
“The conditions will be terrible and it seems like the government has just abandoned them because they are girls and they are poor. If they were the sons of the rich, the government would act.
“Their abductors are not human beings and if the girls get out they will no longer be normal. They will have to have years of counselling to recover.”
At the time of the abduction most schools in the region had closed because of attacks by a terror sect whose very name, Boko Haram, means “Western education is sinful” in the Hausa language.
But these girls had returned to their school in Chibok to take the West Africa Senior School Certificate examination, equivalent to our GCSEs. They were due to start their tests the morning after they were kidnapped at gunpoint.
As the news of the abductions spread, frantic parents rode motorbikes into the forest in pursuit. But they were met by villagers who told them with icy certainty that unless they turned back they would be shot dead by the terrorists.
Some girls managed to escape. In the end 53 got away, but 276 are still missing.
A girl called Rehab, 17, told how she jumped from a truck with schoolmate, Comfort, 15, as they were driven into the forest: “We summoned up some courage and grabbed some of the branches and clung on to them while the truck moved on with the other girls,” she said.
“We jumped down and began to run into the darkness. Comfort and I went in the same direction but four other girls took the path back to a village. We didn’t know where we were but we kept running."
Malam Ali Iliya is the father of another schoolgirl who escaped.
“My daughter said when the trailer got stuck, some of the girls began to jump out and run for their lives and she followed suit. We are lucky our children were not shot,” he said.Boko Haram’s goal is to turn Nigeria into a devout Muslim state under Sharia law. It bombs churches and schools and slaughters men, women and children.
In February its forces attacked a boys’ boarding school,locked the pupils in a building then set it on fire. Any boys who got out had their throats cut and 59 died
Source :Daily Mirror UK.
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