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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.
The
Punch report continues:
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 video 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 Coventry 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 organization.
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