More people Will be Kidnapped - Boko Haram Member Says in TV Interview

A member of Boko Haram on Tuesday granted an interview to US news channel, CBS where he revealed that the group spent three months planning the abduction of 276 girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, last month. The man who gave his name as Saleh Abubakar told his interviewer that the reports that some of the kidnapped girls are sick and in need of medical attention were false. He claimed to have seen the abducted girls three weeks ago, and that all of them are fine. “It’s a lie,” he said. “They don’t have any problem at all.” Abubakar said the girls would neither be harmed nor sold to slavery as slaves (as Abubakar Shekau initially said), because they had converted willingly to Islam. But he maintained that the government must first release all Boko Haram fighters currently in detention. He refused to answer questions on whether the girls had truly been moved across the Nigerian border, and also declined to speak on al-Qaeda’s alleged involvement with Boko Haram. “No, no. I will not tell you anything about this,” he said. “But they are my brothers in Islam. Even in America, we have brothers.” He also claimed that the group was right to abduct the girls, saying: “You see the enemies among the children; it is accepted to fire on all of them. You cannot differentiate the children. You understand?” Abubakar warned that there would be more kidnappings, saying: “Yes, there are plans; yes.”