By John Chimunhu
(News Of The South) – The Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants in April were “raped almost on a daily basis” by the terrorists, according to new evidence.
Testimonies of the few girls who escaped, contained in rare footage smuggled out of Nigeria this week by Australian hostage negotiator Dr Stephen Davis, reveal that the girls endured horrific atrocities.
Davis told Radio Australia Wednesday that he had abandoned his four-month mission to secure the release of the girls after fighting
became too intense in north eastern Nigeria, where the girls are believed to be located.
Davis also smuggled out footage of the fighting in the north, which has gone unreported after CNN, BBC and others left amid Boko Haram
threats to behead foreign journalists.
Davis revealed for the first time how the four girls who escaped managed to elude their captors and tell the world their stories of
rape and abuse by militants who claim to uphold Islam, which forbids sexual violence and murder, the key tools employed by Boko.
The girls described being gang-raped almost on a daily basis. They then escaped to a bush, where a sympathetic young man forced to work as a Boko Haram driver ferried them away from their captors.
One girl, who had switched off her phone and hidden it in her bra, later called her family from their jungle hiding place, but had no idea where they were. She and the others were told to follow the direction of the setting sun every evening, and they crossed from Cameroon, where they had been taken, back to Chibok village on the Nigerian side.
Davis, a former Shell hostage negotiator in the volatile Nigerian oilfields, where kidnappings are routine, said his own attempt to
rescue 60 more girls failed after they were abducted from a jungle
rendezvous by a rival gang. Rebel commanders told him that they had
killed the other group and re-captured the girls.
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