BREAKING NEWS: Boko Haram release chilling videos of missing Nigerian schoolgirls and reveal they have all been forced to convert to Islam and will only be released if Islamist prisoners are freed
- Some of the schoolgirls captured by extremist group Boko Haram on April 14 have been paraded on video
- More than 200 girls were abducted by the Islamist militants from a village in the north-east of Nigeria
- Boko Haram leader has said that he will release the captured girls in return for militant prisoners being freed
- The Nigerian government has reportedly rejected this offer and has two army divisions hunting for the seized girls
- Governor of state where they were seized - Borno - claims to know where they are
- Kashim Shettima said he'd received reports of sightings of the girls and had passed this information to the military
- Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, calls for negotiations with the terrorist group, which he says is 'merciless'
Some of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamic militant group Boko Haram have been paraded on video.
The terror group said many of them had been converted to Islam while being held and all those on the footage are wearing headscarfs.
The group's leader said that it will release them in exchange for militant prisoners being freed.
Chilling: The schoolgirls were paraded on video by Boko Haram
Captured: The video shows the girls wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location
Extremist group Boko Haram seized 276 girls who were taking exams at a school in Borno's north-eastern village of Chibok on April 14
The flamboyant leader of the terror group addresses the camera, offering Nigerian authorities a deal
Abubakar Shekau said that the girls would never be released unless there is an exchange with prisoners
The girls recite Islamic prayers during the clip as they sit in a group in a wooded area
Ordeal: This girl, who was made to speak to the camera, appeared fearful
The Nigerian government has reportedly rejected this offer and has two army divisions hunting for the seized girls.
Some girls on the 17-minute-long video, which was obtained by news agency AFP, spoke to camera, and looked extremely nervous.
The girls recite Islamic prayers during the clip as they sit in a group in a wooded area.
After the girls appear the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, wearing military fatigues and holding an AK-47, addresses the camera. He appears confident and at one point laughs.
'All I am saying is that if you want us to release the girls that we have kidnapped, those who have not accepted Islam will be treated as the Prophet (Mohammed) treated infidels and they will stay with us,' he said, according to a translation of his words originally spoken in a Nigerian language.
'We will not release them while you detain our brothers,' he said, before naming a series of cities in Nigeria. It was not clear whether he was in the same location as the girls.
The video came through channels that have provided previous messages from Shekau, who speaks in the video in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria.
An unidentified armed man (right) films the captured schoolgirls, possibly being held somewhere in north-eastern Nigeria
Militant: The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, vows to sell the hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped in northern Nigeria for as little as £7 during a video message
The video, which shows around 130 of the girls, was aired after the governor of the Nigerian state from where they were kidnapped said that he knew where some of them are being held.
Kashim Shettima, the Governor of Borno, said that he’d received reports of sightings of the girls and had passed on this information to the military.
Extremist group Boko Haram seized 276 girls who were taking exams at a school in Borno's north-eastern village of Chibok on April 14. Some managed to escape, but around 200 remain missing.
Mr Shettima told the BBC: ‘We've got reports of them being sighted in some locations – which we have conveyed to the relevant military authorities, for them to cross-check, verify and get additional information on the accurate location of the daughters.’
His comments came as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, called for negotiations with the terrorist group over the fate of the missing girls.
The Archbishop, who has acted as a hostage negotiator in Nigeria on behalf of the Church in the past, said the girls were at ‘colossal’ risk.
‘They are in the hands of a very disparate group which is extremely irrational and difficult to deal with – and utterly merciless,’ he told BBC Radio Four’s The World This Weekend programme.
A map showing the recent Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria over the past month
Borno state Governor Kashim Shettima said that he'd received reports of sightings of schoolgirls kidnapped by extremist group Boko Haram
The Archbishop said he had negotiated in the past with a predecessor group of Boko Haram and suggested it might be ‘possible’ to strike a deal – although he warned it was ‘questionable’ who was in charge of the group.
He added: ‘You have a very, very difficult inner core (of Boko Haram) and I think negotiations there are extremely complicated, though it needs to be tried.
'And then it goes out and out in different layers of commitment and understanding and involvement. There needs to be active negotiation and contact with all those different layers.’
The Archbishop leads the Anglican communion worldwide, which has about 18 million members in Nigeria, making it the second largest Christian church.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron has joined a Twitter campaign aimed at encouraging the return of the schoolgirls.
The PM followed Michelle Obama and celebrities including Cara Delevingne by holding up a sign saying #Bring Back Our Girls as he appeared on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning.
Mr Cameron said the government would do ‘what we can’ to rescue more than 200 girls abducted by Islamist militants Boko Haram.
But he indicated military action was not imminent, saying Britain cannot just ‘pile in and do whatever we’d like’.
Mr Cameron said he had spoken to Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan to offer assistance and confirmed counter-terrorism and intelligence experts are on the ground with the Americans.
‘We stand ready to do anything more that the Nigerians would want,’ he said.
But he also pointed out the practical difficulties of any rescue operation. ‘It’s immensely complicated because they are probably in this deep area of jungle that is three times the size of Wales,’ he said.
The Twitter campaign yesterday drew support from the Pope, who wrote on the site: ‘Let us all join in prayer for the immediate release of the schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria. #BringBackOurGirls.’
TV presenter Piers Morgan tweeted: 'This is so disgusting. Get in there, save these poor girls, and capture that smirking barbarian. #BringBackOurGirls'.
Meanwhile, Christiane Amanpour, a reporter with CNN, asked the PM to join the campaign as she sat with him on the sofa.
She praised the campaign which she said was ‘really getting to the people in Nigeria’ but said she worried its bubble might burst with nothing concrete having been done.
There are fears that the schoolgirls have been split up into different groups, taken across the border into neighbouring countries and may be sold on as sex slaves.
Yesterday, amid further kidnappings and a bomb attack on a bridge, one teenage girl who escaped from the group said the kidnapping was ‘too terrifying for words.’
Science student Sarah Lawan, 19, described how the girls were taken from their school before dawn and forced into a truck. When they got down she and a friend ran off.
Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram said last week he would sell the remaining captives as slaves for as little as £7. Boko Haram has killed more than 1,500 people this year as it steps up its campaign of violence. The name of the groups means ‘Western education is forbidden’.
Mrs Obama said she and the President were ‘outraged and heartbroken’ over the abduction. ‘In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters,’ she said, referring to Malia, 15, and Sasha, 12.
‘We see their hopes, their dreams and we can only imagine the anguish their parents are feeling right now.’
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan is under intense pressure to act, as he faces a growing threat from militants.
Demonstration: Women protest outside Nigeria's parliament in Abuja, trying to prompt officials to bring back the schoolgirls abducted by Islamist militants, Boko Haram
Anger: Another woman holds a placard at a demonstration in Lagos, Nigeria, pleading for the return of the kidnapped children
Last week the Mail revealed British special forces were on standby to help rescue the girls.That was despite resistance among senior military personnel to putting boots on the ground.
Meanwhile, brutalized residents of a border town repeatedly attacked by Boko Haram, say they are moving across the border to Cameroon because they cannot trust Nigeria's government and military to protect them.
Gamboru has been targeted by the militants in four attacks in the past year. But the fury and destruction wrought by last Monday's attack was unprecedented - more than 1,000 shops, dozens of homes and 314 trucks and cars bombed and burned out, said the chairman of the local Gamboru-Ngala government, Bukar Mustapha.
Who are Boko Haram? Insight into the Nigerian terror group
Boko Haram was founded in 2002 by Mohammed Yusuf – but it didn’t gain worldwide notoriety until it began a violent insurgency in earnest in 2009.
Ultimately, the group wants Nigeria to become an Islamic state.
Since mid-2009 it has killed thousands and has destabilised swathes of the northeast of Nigeria, as well as neighbours Cameroon and Niger.
Its name means ‘Western education is forbidden’ – and it’s the country’s school system that in the main fuels its anger.
Women sit at Gamboru central market in northeastern Nigeria on Monday, burnt by suspected Boko Haram insurgents during the May 5 attack
But the group has murdered people –including Muslims - for merely speaking out against it.
Yusuf established an Islamic school and mosque, which proved popular with many poor Muslim families.
He was killed by Nigerian security forces in 2009, but rather than weaken the group, it re-emerged with increased ferocity under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau.
It has bombed churches, barracks and even the UN headquarters and ruthlessly gunned down those who criticise it, typically using gunmen on the back of motorbikes.
President Goodluck Jonathan became so alarmed at the chaos the group was spreading that in 2013 he declared a state of emergency in the areas where it was most active – Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
The Nigerian military has been fairly ineffective against the heavily armed group.
A lack of investment in training, failure to maintain equipment and dwindling cooperation with Western forces has damaged Nigeria's armed services, while in Boko Haram they face an increasingly well-armed, determined foe.
The militants know the military's limitations. A police source said a fighter jet flew over the market town of Gamburu last Monday as a group of gunmen killed at least 125, but the killers didn't flinch, knowing they could not be targeted while scattered in a densely populated area.
‘In a typical unit, Boko Haram has between 300 and 500 fighters. It's not a guerrilla force that you can fight half heartedly,’ said Jacob Zenn, a Boko Haram expert at U.S. counter-terrorism institution CTC Sentinel. ‘It's snowballing. It's getting more weapons, more recruits, their power is increasing every day.’
On February 12 dozens of fighters loyal to Boko Haram attacked a remote military outpost in the Gwoza hills.
A security source with knowledge of the assault said they came in Hilux tracks with mounted machine guns and showered the camp with gunfire.
Boko Haram's fighters had little cover and were easily picked off - 50 of them died against nine Nigerian troops - but they still managed to make off with the base's entire armoury stockpile of 200 mortar bombs, 50 rocket-propelled grenades and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, the source said.
Their ability to dart over the border into Cameroon, whose own security forces have shown little appetite for taking them on, gives the militants an added advantage.
Ethnic and religious divisions within the military have also bred some collusion with Boko Haram, sources say.
Ethnic and religious divisions within the military have also bred some collusion with Boko Haram, sources say.
Can a hashtag offer any help to abducted girls?
Parents of the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls are hoping for a miracle. So far, all they have is a hashtag.
More than three weeks after Islamic extremists abducted the girls, world outrage is galvanizing Twitter and other social-media networks. But observers question whether the burst of online interest will last and whether it can ever elevate the case from a trending topic to a mandate for action.
‘People are finally taking it seriously,’ said Fayokemi Ogunmola a Nigerian-born sophomore at the University of Rochester who leads her campus Pan-African Students Association. Ongumola had followed the story since it broke April 15 but only recently saw more interest among classmates using the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag and wearing head wraps or the green and white of the Nigerian flag.
