Boko Haram, the terrorist group that kidnapped over 200 teenage girls from their school in Northeast Nigeria one month ago, released a video yesterday on YouTube offering to free the girls in return for the release of imprisoned group members.
Around 100 girls are shown in the video praying and wearing full grey veils. “We will not release them while you detain our brothers,” Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau says. Nigeria has reportedly deployed two army divisions to find the girls. “The government of Nigeria is considering all options towards freeing the girls and reuniting them with their parents,” said senior Ministry of Information official Mike Omeri.
Several countries have offered assistance to the Nigerian government, including the United States. An anonymous source told the New York Times that US surveillance aircraft have already joined the search for the girls and satellite images have been provided to the Nigerian government.
Nigerian officials updated the number of girls still in the hands of Boko Haram to 223 after 53 escaped. After the kidnapping, Nigerians demanded that the government needed to do more to secure the girls’ safe return home. Rallies were held around the world in support, and a social media campaign spread using the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Shekau threatened in an earlier video to sell the girls into slavery, and many feared that the girls had already been trafficked into other countries or forced into marriage to Boko Haram members.
Boko Haram has a long history of terrorism in northern Nigeria. Human Rights Watch reported in 2012 on the group’s atrocious activities, which have included murder, abduction, rape, mutilation, and the use of child soldiers. The group kidnapped 8 more girls from Warabe and killed as many as 300 people in an attack on a city in the northeastern region of Nigeria last week.
