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| CHIBOK GIRLS |
Western governments knew the
whereabouts of 80 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram but failed to
launch a rescue mission for them, Sunday Times of London has reported.
According to the report, videos of the girls have emerged where they were being used as sex slaves.
It stated that the United States and the
United Kingdom’s surveillance discovered the location of the girls, but
did not rescue them.
Terrorists stormed a secondary boarding
school in the remote town of Chibok in Borno State, northern Nigeria in
April 2014, and seized 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year
exams.
Although 57 of the girls managed to
escape, the rest have remained missing and have not been heard from or
seen since apart from in May that year, when 130 of them appeared in a
Boko Haram vidoe wearing hijab and reciting the Quran.
Dr. Andrew Pocock, the former British
High Commissioner to Nigeria, has now revealed that a large group of the
missing girls were spotted by British and American surveillance
officials shortly after their disappearance, but that experts felt
nothing could be done.
He told The Sunday Times that
Western governments felt ‘powerless’ to help as any rescue attempt would
have been too high risk – with Boko Haram terrorists using the girls as
human shields. Pocock said, “A couple of months after
the kidnapping, fly-bys and an American eye in the sky spotted a group
of up to 80 girls in a particular spot in the Sambisa Forest, around a
very large tree, called locally the Tree of Life, along with evidence of
vehicular movement and a large encampment.’
He said the girls were there for at
least four weeks but authorities were ‘powerless’ to intervene – and the
Nigerian government did not ask for help anyway. He said, “A land-based attack would have
been seen coming miles away and the girls killed, an air-based rescue,
such as flying in helicopters or Hercules, would have required large
numbers and meant a significant risk to the rescuers and even more so to
the girls.”
Pocock said a large group of the missing
girls were spotted by British and American surveillance officials
shortly after their disappearance. He added, “You might have rescued a few
but many would have been killed. My personal fear was always about the
girls not in that encampment — 80 were there, but 250 were taken, so the
bulk were not there. What would have happened to them? You were damned
if you do and damned if you don’t.’
In an investigation by Christina Lamb for the Sunday Times magazine, Pocock said the information was passed to the Nigerian authorities, but they made no request for help.
The magazine has also seen brutal rape videos which show schoolgirls are being used as sex slaves by the terrorists.
Lamb reports: ‘They film schoolgirls being raped over and over again until their screams become silent.’
Some of the girls who managed to escape
told Ms Lamb they were kept in ‘women’s prisons’ where they were taught
about Islam. Boko Haram fighters would visit and pick their wives. The girls were powerless to resist as
even then the men would be heavily armed. They were shown videos of
people being raped, tortured and killed as a threat of what would happen
to them if they tried to run away.
Dr Stephen Davis, a former canon at
Coventy Cathedral who has spent several years attempting to negotiate
with the terror group said Boko Haram ‘make Isis look like playtime’ and
said it is ‘beyond belief’ that the authorities both in Nigeria and the
West do not know where the schoolgirls are.
He insists the locations of the camps
where the girls are being kept are well known and can even be seen on
Google maps. He added, ‘How many girls have to be raped and abducted
before the West will do anything?”
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau
(pictured) previously claimed that all the girls, some of whom were
Christian, had converted to Islam and been ‘married off’
The mass abduction brought the brutality
of the Islamist insurgency to worldwide attention and prompted the
viral social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls which was supported by
everyone from Michelle Obama to Malala Yousafzai.
Boko Haram violence has left at least
17,000 dead and forced more than 2.6 million from their homes since
2009. The Global Terrorism Index ranks the group as the word’s deadliest
terror organisation.
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