Captors say video shows Nigerian girls

Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade, Nigeria's top military spokesman,left, Director General, National Orientation Agency, Mike Omeri, centre, Frank Mba National police spokesman, right, attend a press conference on the abducted school girls in Abuja, Nigeria, Monday, May 12, 2014. A Nigerian Islamic extremist leader says nearly 300 abducted schoolgirls will not be seen again until the government frees his detained fighters. A new video from Nigeria's homegrown Boko Haram terrorist network received Monday purports to show some of the girls and young women chanting Quranic verses in Arabic. The barefoot girls look frightened and sad and sit huddled together wearing gray Muslim veils. Some Christians among them say they have converted to Islam. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade, Nigeria's top military spokesman,left, Director General, National Orientation Agency, Mike Omeri, centre, Frank Mba National police spokesman, right, attend a press conference on the abducted school girls in Abuja, Nigeria, Monday, May 12, 2014. A Nigerian Islamic extremist leader says nearly 300 abducted schoolgirls will not be seen again until the government frees his detained fighters. A new video from Nigeria's homegrown Boko Haram terrorist network received Monday purports to show some of the girls and young women chanting Quranic verses in Arabic. The barefoot girls look frightened and sad and sit huddled together wearing gray Muslim veils. Some Christians among them say they have converted to Islam. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria -- A new clue about the fate of hundreds of girls kidnapped by an Islamist extremist group in Nigeria emerged Monday with the release of a video apparently showing many of the girls and new threats to "sell them" and "hold them as slaves" until Boko Haram members are released from prison.

If genuine, it would be the first public glimpse of the girls since they were seized April 15 from a school in Chibok, an isolated village about 80 miles from the regional capital of Maiduguri in Nigeria's far northeast, where an Islamist insurgency has bedeviled authorities for years. Officials have said 276 of the girls remain missing.

The video shows dozens of girls dressed in headscarves and long gowns that cover their bodies but reveal their faces. They are praying and sitting cross-legged in the type of scrubland that is pervasive in the region. One of the girls is shown reciting the opening of the Quran, three express allegiance to Islam, and two said they had converted from Christianity.

Families have said most of the girls abducted are Christians.

In the video, two of the girls were taken to the front and questioned by an unseen man.

"Why have you become a Muslim?" the man asked one.

"The reason why I became a Muslim is because the path we are on is not the right path," the girl said, nervously turning her body from side to side. "We should enter the right path so that Allah will be happy with us."

A second girl, who looked to be in her midteens, was asked whether the girls had been mistreated. She denied it, saying they experienced no harassment "except righteousness."

U.S. officials have seen the video and are reviewing it, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"We have no reason to question its authenticity," he said. "Our intelligence experts are combing over every detail of it for clues that might help in the ongoing efforts to secure the release of the girls."

A Nigerian government statement said officials were reviewing the video and would "continue to explore all options for the release and safe return of our girls back to their homes."

Parents in Chibok planned to turn on a generator Monday, hoping to watch the video and identify their daughters, said one of the town's civil leaders, Pogu Bitrus.

"There's an atmosphere of hope, hope that these girls are alive, whether they have been forced to convert to Islam or not," he said. "We want to be able to say, 'These are our girls.'"

The video contains a message from Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, in Hausa and Arabic. In it, he acknowledged the worldwide attention the kidnappings have drawn.

"Just because we kidnapped these young girls, you are making noise? Allah has blessed most of them with accepting Islam," he said. "You are making so much noise about Chibok, Chibok, Chibok. Only Allah knows how many women we are holding."

He repeated the slavery threat he made in a video released a week ago.

"There are many verses in the Quran that allows the seizing of slaves. Abduction of slaves is allowed," he said. "It exists, it exists, yes, it exists."

Boko Haram, which bitterly opposes secular education and Western culture, has carried out dozens of school attacks since 2012, killing scores of students and teachers. Schools in the region had been closed for weeks before the kidnapping because of attacks. But the girls had gone back to the Chibok government school to take an exam and were staying overnight. The Islamists overpowered the town's police protection and seized more than 300 girls. Fifty-three were able to flee their captors.

A worldwide effort has begun to try to rescue them, with the United States, France, Britain and Israel pledging to help. But Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's acceptance Sunday of help from Israel, which plans to send a counterterrorism team, has angered some Muslims.

A leading Islamic scholar, Ahmed Mahmud-Gumi, warned in a statement that accepting help from Israel would "turn Nigeria into another global arena and battlefield for the filthy neocolonial squabbles by interest groups." On Saturday, he said allowing Western soldiers onto Nigerian soil could make the country a new magnet for foreign Islamic militants who want to confront the U.S. and others.

Carney said the U.S. team in Nigeria is made up of nearly 30 people drawn from the State and Defense departments, as well as the FBI.

Carney said the team includes five State Department officials, including a team leader, two strategic communications experts, a civil security expert and a regional medical support officer. Four FBI officials with expertise in safe recovery, negotiations and preventing future kidnappings are also part of the group.

The Pentagon said 16 Defense Department workers are on the team, including planners and advisers who were already in Nigeria and have been redirected to assist the government. Also on the team are Defense Department workers who were sent to Nigeria from Africom, the U.S. Africa Command based in Germany.

The foreign help does not involve boots on the ground but rather experts in intelligence gathering, counterterrorism and hostage negotiations. The Nigerian military has waged an aggressive offensive in the region, but so far it has been unable to make advances toward the girls' recovery.

But in Monday's video, Shekau offered a hint about what might induce him to release the girls.

"I swear to almighty Allah you will not see them again until you release our people that you have captured," he said as he cradles an assault rifle in the video.

"We will never release them until our brethren are released," he said. "Our brethren that are held in Borno, in Yobe, in Kano, in Kaduna, in Abuja, in Lagos and Enugu. Our brethren that are held all over Nigeria."

It is not known how many suspected Boko Haram members are detained by security forces. Hundreds were killed by soldiers last month when Shekau's fighters stormed the military's main northeastern barracks in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram and the headquarters of a year-old military state of emergency to put down the 5-year-old Islamic uprising.

Nigerian Interior Minister Patrick Abba Morro rejected the offer of a prisoner exchange, telling the BBC that it was "absurd" for a "terrorist group" to try to set conditions.

The Nigerian government has not acknowledged any negotiation with the group, although one official in the north has said some type of bargaining appears to be happening.

Also on Monday, French President Francois Hollande invited Jonathan and leaders from neighboring Benin, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, as well as representatives of Britain, the European Union and the U.S., to a summit Saturday to focus on Boko Haram, terrorism and insecurity in West Africa.

A French official said Jonathan had agreed to attend. He spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the gathering have not been finalized.

Information for this article was contributed by Adam Nossiter of The New York Times; by Michelle Faul, Sunday Alamba and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 05/13/2014

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