The girl captives of Nigeria: Boko Haram leader parades a hundred traumatised hostages in video

 
Faces of terror: the kidnapped schoolgirls are seen in the video wearing hijabs and praying

British, American and Nigerian counter-terrorism experts were today examining a video reportedly showing more than 100 girls abducted by Islamist terror group Boko Haram.

The footage is said to feature the terror group’s leader Abubakar Shekau demanding the release of captured militants in exchange for freeing the mostly Christian schoolgirls.

After him speaking for 17 minutes, pictures are shown of about 100 students, wearing full-length hijabs and praying at a rural location.

Shekau, who does not appear in the same footage as the girls, claims: “We have indeed ‘liberated’ them. These girls have become Muslims.”

But there was confusion over whether he was offering to free only girls who had not “converted” to Islam — or all of them — in exchange for prisoners who had been in jail for several years.

Hostage experts will be tracking the video and anyone involved in producing or making it public.

Boko Haram, which means “Western education is forbidden”, seized more than 300 girls from a boarding school near Chibok in Borno state, north-east Nigeria four weeks ago and has threatened to sell them as wives.

Around 50 managed to escape but more than 270 are believed to be being held captive in the vast Sambisi forest. One who escaped during the raidon the school said today that she would have “rather died” than be among the hostages. She spoke as the Nigerian government faced growing pressure to make a breakthrough in the hunt for the girls. The young woman, who did not want to be identified, was ordered by one of the Islamist militants to get into a lorry, but made a dash to avoid capture.

“He said go and enter this car — a big lorry,” she said. But the girl dropped to the ground before the vehicle drove off. “We ran into the bush. We ran and ran and we were gone,” she added, speaking to a CNN crew.

She told of her ordeal amid reports that the Nigerian authorities have made indirect contact with Boko Haram. The immediate focus of the hunt is gathering intelligence on the girls’ location. They are believed to have been split into groups to make finding them harder.

America, Britain, France, China and Canada, as well as Nigeria’s neighbours, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, are involved in the search using spy planes and satellite images. Borno’s governor, Kashim Shettima, said he had passed on to the military authorities a number of reported sightings. Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan’s government has faced severe criticism for not doing more to find the girls and he now faces a dilemma over whether to strike a deal with the militants.

But Dr Reuben Abati, a media adviser to the president, said: “The government of Nigeria has no intention to pay a ransom or to buy the girls, because the sale of human beings is a crime against humanity.” David Cameron, who has described the abductions as “pure evil”, has sent a British team of counter-terrorism and intelligence experts to the Nigerian capital Abuja, to work alongside a bigger group from the US, and the Nigerian authorities.

The Prime Minister also defended Britain’s aid to Nigeria, of £275 million a year, to help “mend” the African country which was not “functioning properly”, with extremists operating in the north.

He added: “But I can also make the argument that actually helping Somalia, helping Nigeria, helping Afghanistan or Pakistan, if we can try and mend these countries through a combination of economic growth and aid and education and development, then we won’t get the mass migration, we won’t have so many asylum seekers, we won’t have the problems of terrorism and violence.”

French president Francois Hollande has offered to host an international summit on fighting Boko Haram, which has been engaged in a campaign against the Nigerian government since 2009.

US First Lady Michelle Obama has described herself and President Obama as being “outraged and heartbroken” over the girls’ abduction, which has sparked protests around the world.

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