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Boko Haram threatens to sell abducted Nigeria girls as slaves

A woman in Lagos on May 5, 2014 carries a placard to press for the release of the missing Chibok school girls/AFP

A woman in Lagos on May 5, 2014 carries a placard to press for the release of the missing Chibok school girls/AFP

KANO, May 5 – Boko Haram on Monday claimed responsibility for the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria that has triggered international outrage, threatening to sell them as “slaves”.

“I abducted your girls,” the Islamist group’s leader Abubakar Shekau said in the 57-minute video obtained by AFP, referring to the 276 students kidnapped three weeks ago from their boarding school in Chibok, Borno state.

Fifty-three of the girls managed to escape from the militants but 223 were still being held, state police said last Friday.

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has been under mounting pressure to act since gunmen stormed the girls’ school on April 14, forcing them from their dormitories on to trucks and driving them into the bush.

In his first public comments on the abduction on Sunday evening, Jonathan pledged that the government would find the girls and return them to their families.

“This is a trying time for this country. It is painful,” he said, adding that he had sought international assistance, including from the United States, in tackling the country’s security challenges.

Hours before the girls were taken, the capital Abuja was hit by its deadliest ever attack: a car bomb on the outskirts of the city that killed 75 people, also claimed by Boko Haram.

A copy-cat bombing in the same spot on May 1 has put the country further on edge as Abuja prepares to host a World Economic Forum summit that opens on Wednesday and includes a visit from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

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