Report: Abducted Girls Being Forced to Marry Islamic Captors
Scores of girls and young women kidnapped from a school in Nigeria are being forced to marry their Islamic extremist abductors, a civic organization reported Wednesday.At the same time, the Boko Haram terrorist network is negotiating over the students’ fate and is demanding an unspecified ransom for their release, a Borno state community leader told The Associated Press.
He said the Wednesday night message from the abductors also claimed that two of the girls have died from snake bites.
Hundreds of girls abducted from Nigerian school in night 'have been sold to Islamic militants as wives for £8 each'
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- Mass rally will draw upward of one million people across Nigeria
- Schoolgirls transported across borders and sold as wives for £8
- Girls aged 16-18 were seized from an dormitories in Chibok
- Reports that they are being forced to marry against their will
- So far none have been rescued, but some of the girls have escaped
The teenagers were abducted from their secondary school, in Chibok, in the middle of the night by armed men from Boko Haram and are believed to have smuggled across the borders to Cameroon and Chad Republic.
Some of them have been forced to marry against their will and are being used as servants and sex slaves, according to a community elder.
A protestor turns out for the mass demonstration to help bring home the hundreds of schoolgirls taken from their dormitories by extreme Islamists
Rescue our daughters: A cry from a pleading mother at a mass demonstration taking place across Nigeria today
'If these captors are trying to achieve a political point, I think the best thing is for us to try to make sure that they don’t succeed,' he said.
'But from all indications they are succeeding, due to inaction of government it is helping these people in achieving their objectives.'
He said that the girls had been ferried to Cameroon and Chad by canoe where prospective husbands were paying around 2,000 naira (£8) for a bride.
The girls were kidnapped on April 14 by gunmen who raided the dormitories taking the girls while they slept.
Initially officials said that about 85 girls had been taken. But it later emerged that as many as 234 were missing.
So far, none of the schoolgirls have been rescued. About 40 managed to escape the grips of their heavily armed captors - believed to members of a Jihad Islamist group.
Parents and other town residents have mounted a search in the Sambisa Forest, which borders Chibok town and is a known hideout for the militants.
The troubled country has also seen demonstrators protest against the closure of schools in Abuja. Police turned out firing live bullets, water cannons and spraying tear gas.
A man weeps as he joins parents of kidnapped school girls during a meeting with the Borno State governor in Chibok, Maiduguri, Borno State April 22.
Security sources have said they are in 'hot pursuit' of the abductors, but so far they have not rescued any of the kidnap victims
The girls' families and their supporters have now organised mass demonstrations across Nigeria in an attempt to force President Goodluck Jonathan to take more drastic action.
Boko Haram has been abducting girls and young women in attacks on schools, villages and towns, but the latest mass kidnapping is unprecedented.
The extremists use the young women as porters, cooks and sex slaves, according to Nigerian officials.
The group rejects western beliefs and its purpose is to establish a "pure" Islamic state ruled by sharia law.
Attacks: A heavy military presence in the Borno region of Nigeria did not prevent the kidnapping (file photo)
Attack: The militants struck Chibok, in northwestern Nigeria, last Tuesday