Exclusive: Boko Haram Militants 'Seeking Prisoner Swap to Return Schoolgirls'...

Exclusive: Boko Haram militants plan to use kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls as
bargaining chips to free comrades rather than kill them, former mediator tells The Telegraph

Members of civil society groups in Abuja protest the abduction of the Chibok school girls...

The Telegraph

Abuja
May 8, 2014

Nigerian Islamists who kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls are seeking a prisoner swap for jailed comrades, The Daily Telegraph has been told.

Shehu Sani, who has previously brokered face-to-face peace talks with Boko Haram, said he believed that the video in which its leader threatened to sell the girls as “slaves” was proof that it planned to use them as bargaining chips rather than kill them.

The video released earlier this week showed Abubakar Shekau gloating that he would sell the captives “in the market” to anyone wishing to take them as wives.

But while the broadcast appalled the captives’ families and provoked worldwide outrage, Mr Sani saw it as a veiled attempt to reach out for a trade with the Nigerian government.

“If you look at the fact that these girls have already been in captivity for some three weeks, then it is possible to detect a conciliatory tone in this statement from Shekau – he is not saying he is going to kill the girls,” Mr Sani said.

“The group is most likely to want to attach some kind of conditions to the girls being released, such as the freeing of some of their own prisoners.”

Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, pledged the safe return of the girls, who were taken more than three weeks ago from their boarding school in the lawless Borno region in the north of the country. It is thought that some of them have already died, and there are fears that scores of others have been trafficked into Cameroon.

Shehu Sani,right @ a rally in Kaduna to protest the girls' plight & Nana Shettima,wife of Borno Governor, weeps as she speaks

Mr Jonathan thanked delegates, including Britain, the US, France and China, at the World Economic Forum in Abuja for their offers of help to rescue the girls. He claimed that the mass abduction would mark a turning point in the battle against the Islamists, saying: “I believe that the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end of terror in Nigeria.”

France said on Thursday that it would station about 3,000 troops in neighbouring Mali, Niger and Chad to help tackle militants in the Sahel region.

It followed Britain’s announcement on Wednesday that it was to send a small team of experts to Nigeria “as soon as possible”. The team is expected to concentrate on planning and giving advice to local officials rather than any ground operation to free the girls, although Downing Street is also understood to have ordered three locally based liaison officers from the SAS to advise the rescue mission.

As the international community offered its support to Nigeria, celebrities and politicians around the world voiced their outrage over the abduction, posting messages on social media with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.