U.S. planes spot girls in Northeast
village
Posted by: Adesoji Adeniyi, Osogbo
in News 25 mins ago
Recent United States (U.S.)
surveillance flights over northeastern
Nigeria showed what appeared to be
large groups of girls held together in
remote locations, raising hopes
among domestic and foreign officials
that they are among the group that
Boko Haram abducted from a
boarding school in April, U.S. and
Nigerian officials said.
The surveillance suggests that at
least some of the 219 schoolgirls still
held captive haven’t been forced into
marriage or sex slavery, as had been
feared, but instead are being used as
bargaining chips for the release of
prisoners.
The U.S. aerial imagery matches
what Nigerian officials say they hear
from northern Nigerians who have
interacted with the Islamist
insurgency: that some of Boko
Haram’s most famous set of captives
are getting special treatment,
compared with the hundreds of other
girls the group is suspected to have
kidnapped.
Boko Haram appears to have seen
the schoolgirls as of higher value,
given the global attention paid to
their plight, those officials said.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who
faces re-election in February, is under
political pressure to secure the girls’
release, with some people urging him
to agree to a prisoner swap.
The government has ruled out a
rescue operation, saying it is
unwilling to risk the girls’ lives, or a
prisoner swap.
“We don’t exchange innocent people
for criminals. That is not on the
cards,” said spokesman Reuben Abati
last week in an interview.
In early July, U.S. surveillance flights
over northeastern Nigeria spotted a
group of 60 to 70 girls held in an open
field, said two U.S. defence officials.
Late last month, they spotted a set of
roughly 40 girls in a different field.
When surveillance flights returned,
both sets of girls had been moved.
U.S. intelligence analysts say they
don’t have enough information to
confirm whether the two groups of
girls they saw are the same, they
said.
They also can’t say whether those
groups included any of the schoolgirls
the group has held since April. But
U.S. and Nigerian officials said they
believe they are indeed those
schoolgirls.
“It’s unusual to find a large group of
young women like that in an open
space,” said one U.S. defense official.
“We’re assuming they’re not a rock
band of hippies out there camping.”
A wave of intermediaries acting on
their own has tried to negotiate the
girls’ release, Mr. Abati said, adding
that the president has neither
authorized nor discouraged those
efforts.
Several of those intermediaries have
said Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar
Shekau, has ordered his fighters to
treat the girls as valuable hostages—
not sex slaves—one senior Nigerian
security adviser said.
“He gave a directive that anybody
found touching any of the girls should
be killed immediately,” the adviser
said. “If true, it is cheering.”
It would also show that Boko Haram
is trying to follow an al Qaeda tactic:
swapping hostages for money and
political gain.
The group is accelerating its
kidnapping of foreigners and
politicians: Over the past two months,
it has been blamed for abducting a
German expatriate, 10 Chinese
laborers in nearby Cameroon and the
wife of Cameroon’s deputy prime
minister.
Boko Haram has used hostages in
the past to demand the exchange of
its prisoners held in both Nigeria and
Cameroon, which was one of the
conditions for the release of a French
family from captivity last year.
The international effort to find the
girls has waned: The U.S. military is
now carrying out just one
surveillance flight a day, mostly by
manned aircraft, totaling only 35 to
40 hours a week, said U.S. defence
officials, as drones have been shifted
back toward other operations.
Some accounts suggest the burden of
providing for scores of girls has
become a point of dissension in Boko
Haram’s ranks.
http://thenationonlinen
g.net/new/u-s-planes-spot-girls-
in-northeast-village/

bringbackourgirls

www.tribune.com.ng/news/top-stories/item/12683/us-surveillance-flights-locate-chibok-girls/

www.news247.com.ng/news/us-spy-planes-hunting-bboko-haramb-abductees-spot-large-group-of-girls

What does Assassin Dokubo have to say about this?

Where are the pishures?