Boko Haram returns hundreds of kidnapped Nigerian schoolboys

Hundreds of Nigerian schoolboys kidnapped by Boko Haram past 7 days were launched to the government Thursday, the community condition governor announced. 

In accordance to The Wall Street Journal, Gov. Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina Point out mentioned in a televised job interview Thursday that 344 boys experienced been specified to state authorities in a forest a lot more than a single hundred miles from the school wherever they had been kidnapped very last Friday. 

Masari added that the boys would instantly be obtaining health-related interest and are scheduled to meet up with with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday. 

This arrives two times immediately after Boko Haram, a U.S.-selected terrorist group, officially claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The students had been abducted at gunpoint from the Government Science Secondary University in Katsina. 

The Everyday Nigerian reported that it gained an audio information from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau expressing his team kidnapped the schoolboys because Western education violates the tenets of Islam, in accordance to The Related Push. 

At the very least 600 boys had been ready to escape the assault on the school, AP noted, even though attackers engaged in a gunfight with local police. 

Earlier Thursday, Boko Haram unveiled a movie purportedly exhibiting one particular of the schoolboys begging to the Nigerian federal government to dissolve the army and vigilante groups, as perfectly as faculties, in accordance to The New York Instances. 

“We have been caught by a gang of Abu Shekau,” he reportedly explained. “Some of us have been killed.” 

“You have to send out them the funds,” he added.

A dozen smaller sized boys crowded close to him in the online video and reported, “Help us,” to the camera, the Occasions documented. 

In a BBC job interview recorded just before news broke of the launch, Masari mentioned the kidnappers experienced contacted the father of just one of the kidnapped boys and demanded that the government fork out ransom.

“We have an concept the place they are, but we are hoping to make sure there is no collateral damage, that the youngsters are brought back again properly,” he claimed during the job interview. “So that is why we are treading carefully and softly.”

The Occasions claimed that Masari advised a Deutsche Welle television reporter subsequent the release that the govt experienced not paid out Boko Haram any income.

Nigeria has come beneath elevated global scrutiny for its managing of terrorist teams and alleged abuses by Nigerian forces. 

The U.S. last 7 days designated Nigeria for the very first time as a Nation of Individual Issue in excess of violations of spiritual freedom, a single of the most serious designations from the Condition Section that opens the place up to sanctions.