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(Reuters) – In the gloom of a hilltop cave in Nigeria where she was held captive, Hajja had a knife pressed to her throat by a man who gave her a choice – convert to Islam or die.

Two gunmen from Boko Haram had seized the Christian teenager in July as she picked corn near her village in the Gwoza hills, a remote part of northeastern Nigeria where a six-month-old government offensive is struggling to contain an insurgency by the al Qaeda-linked Islamist group.

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In a new development, Boko Haram is abducting Christian women whom it converts to Islam on pain of death and then forces into “marriage” with fighters – a tactic that recalls Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in the jungles of Uganda.

The three months Hajja spent as the slave of a 14-strong guerrilla unit, cooking and cleaning for them before she escaped, give a rare glimpse into how the Islamists have changed tack in the face of Nigerian military pressure.

“I can’t sleep when I think of being there,” the 19-year-old told Reuters, recounting forced mountain marches, rebel intelligence gathering – and watching her captors slit the throats of prisoners Hajja had helped lure into a trap.

Hajja, who was kidnapped by al Qaeda-linked Islamist group Boko Haram, poses for a picture after an interview with Reuters in Abuja

Hajja, who was kidnapped by al Qaeda-linked Islamist group Boko Haram, poses for a picture after an interview with Reuters in Abuja

Nigerian security officials say the Islamists have pulled back after army assaults since May on their bases on the semi-desert plain and are now sheltering in the Mandara mountains, along the Cameroon border around the city of Gwoza. From the hills they have been launching increasingly deadly attacks.

The rugged mountain terrain – as fellow al Qaeda allies found in Afghanistan – has proven an advantageous base for a movement that once styled itself the “Nigerian Taliban” and sees all non-Muslims as infidels who must convert or be killed.

The United States designated Boko Haram a terrorist group on Wednesday. Western governments are increasingly concerned about the wider threat posed by the group, which wants to create an Islamic state in a religiously mixed country of 170 million and which has ties with al Qaeda’s north African wing.

Hajja’s account of how Boko Haram has adapted and survived in recent months underlines the difficulties governments in the region face. The spread of the threat was underscored by the kidnap on Thursday of a French priest in Cameroon, an attack France believes may have involved Boko Haram.

The following day, Nigerian troops raided a base for the group in the Gwoza hills. The army said it killed 29 Boko Haram fighters and was “closing in” on the rebels.

The group, whose name broadly translates as “Western education is sinful”, has killed thousands during a four-year insurgency against the Nigerian state, targeting the police and armed forces as well as politicians and then turning on Christians in the predominantly Muslim north of the country.

The military offensive launched in mid-May, and the fact that large numbers of civilian vigilantes have supported it, has triggered a fierce backlash against local people by Boko Haram. The militants have killed hundreds in the past few weeks, including in massacres of school children.

The Islamists dragged Hajja along rocky mountain paths and slept in caves in the hills, a landscape unfamiliar to most Nigerian soldiers, recruited from the plains.

She ceremonially converted to Islam, cooked for the men, carried ammunition during an attack on a police outpost and was about to be married to one of the insurgents before she managed to engineer a dramatic escape. She says she was not raped.

“If I cried, they beat me. If I spoke, they beat me. They told me I must become a Muslim but I refused again and again,” Hajja told Reuters in an interview. Her family name is withheld to protect relatives still living in the Gwoza area.

“They were about to slaughter me and one of them begged me not to resist and just before I had my throat slit I relented. They put a veil on me and made me read from the Koran,” she said in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, where she is now living.

At least a dozen teenagers like her remain in captivity, Michael Yohanna, a councilor in Gwoza’s local government told Reuters. Some have married commanders, recalling Kony’s LRA, which abducted thousands of “wives” in a 20-year war in Uganda before a truce in 1986. Kony remains a fugitive.

A man called Ibrahim Tada Nglayike led the group Hajja was with. On one mission, Hajja was sent to stand in a field near a village to attract the attention of civilians working with the army. When five men approached her, they were ambushed.

“They took them back to a cave and tied them up. They cut their throats, one at a time,” Hajja said. “I thought my heart would burst out of my chest, because I was the bait.”

Among those who did the killing was the Muslim wife of the leader Nglayike, the only other woman in the band of fighters.

Reuters verified Hajja’s account of having been abducted with independent figures in the region. Boko Haram shuns the media and none of its members could be contacted for comment.

Hajja says the long-bearded insurgents lived a basic lifestyle, eating corn, millet and occasionally meat from animals they stole and which she slaughtered.

The group, armed with AK-47 rifles and pistols stolen from police they killed, moved every day around the hills to avoid being tracked by the army and slept in the caves to shelter from the cold and for protection against air assaults.

“They didn’t use phones but they had a radio,” Hajja said.

“They would listen to BBC Hausa or Voice of America and jump and shout if they heard about Boko Haram attacks.

source: http://pmnewsnigeria.com

President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday ruled out payment of compensation to victims of terrorists attacks carried out by the Boko Haram sect and other groups in the country.

Receiving report from the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North at the Presidential Villa, the President said the government will only look at ways to help the victims get back to their businesses.

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Despite the challenges faced by the committee at its inauguration, he said that it has laid the foundation for follow up action which would lead to the eventual control and end of the crisis.

Even with the progress made in the fight against terrorism in the north, he maintained that the war is not yet won.

He said:

“We also noted the suggestion about the victims’ support because that is one of the terms of reference; how will government help to see that we can assist. Government is not going to compensate. It is not an issue of compensation but how do we assist people who have suffered to get back to business one way or the other.

“Government will look into this and other recommendations in your report and see that the right decisions are taken.

“Incidentally, we have security council meeting because this committee was an offshoot of the security council and we will review some aspects of this report and probably set up a team to look at it and work out a planned programme in terms of implementation of the recommendations.”

On the challenging assignment, he said:

 “First, let me on behalf of government welcome you to the State House and indeed, thank you for accepting to serve for the period you have served. Even the day we inaugurated you, we noted that it was quite a challenging job. It is not a ballroom dance because you were asked to meet the kind of characters you cannot even predict their behaviour.”

 Continue after the break.

"Lets think and reason it ourselves even without think and thank's help. Non of them and their ideas can be trusted."

"I have a strong feeling U.S want Africans and Nigerians to Believe Boko Haram is Terrorizing Nigeria( Though they're really terrorizing and other opportunists have taken advantage of it to loot and run the economy dry). Without saying much story, this is beginning to look and sound like 'ex-bin laden. We are not stupid in Africa. May be some are daft and may easily fall for their Propaganda but not all. U.S should leave Africans and Nigerians to their Problems. We do not need their help in solving our problems. I understand their National Interest comes first and they are doing anything to protect it. They should not turn Africa and Africans to what they did to Middle east."

"We are not in support of double standard. Yes our leaders are corrupt but not as corrupt as the father of corruption(U.S foreign policy) itself."

"Placing a bounty on someone that may not even exist is senseless and backward. War Games that can only work in the middle east not in Africa."

Think-Tank Continues....
In this latest 33 second video, the “Shekau” was even further from the camera and only appeared to speak for just 10 seconds. The latest video, released on Youtube, is perhaps the biggest sham in the history of terrorism media:

Latest 10 Second Sham Video of Blurry Ghost of Late Shekau

This latest sham video clip is very identical to the August video below, also circulated by AFP, which US Council on Foreign relations discredited as that of an imposter, except it has a black drape over the old background and Shekau’s image appears to have green-light peripheral shine around it indicating super-imposition.



The Older Video also of highly questionable authenticity:



It appears “Shekau” did not wish to risk thorough investigation of “his” video clips and hence, he made it as blurry, as distant from the camera and as short as possible. 10 seconds only, enough time to say 5 words and quickly brush his ghost teeth!

May 2013 picture is given below. No video ever shown to public: Green Screen Floating Head Ghost






Snapshot from September video is given below, also identified as fake by the U.S.:


Please note that the bulky green carpet is the same as in May video.

The question the world asks is why? Why are the global media struggling so hard, more desperately each time to show dead Shekau as alive? Why are they promoting all sorts of glaringly fake video’s of the man? What is their gain? Who is struggling so hard to terrorize Nigeria with media propaganda of the bogey-monster?

Barely a week after some suspected Boko Haram terrorists launched an attack on a security post along Bama- Banki- Firgi road in which they went away with some security patrol vehicles after setting the entire place ablaze, another group of terrorists suspected to be Boko Haram insurgents blocked a convoy of a bridegroom with his invited guests to a wedding in Michika Local Government Area of Adamawa state, killing over 30, including the groom.

Our correspondent gathered from a reliable source that the groom, his friends and family associates from Maiduguri, the Borno State capital went to the wedding Fatiha in Michika town, where the wedding was performed successfully; but luck run out of them as they were ambushed by a group of suspected terrorists killing over 30 of them.

Bama- Banki –Firgi federal highway along the junction is about 40 kilometres away from Cameroon Republic, 100 kilometres to Maiduguri and 26 kilometres to Gwoza Local Government area of Borno State, which is one of the mountainous areas suspected to be an enclave of terrorists who fled from the Sambisa Forests during the offensive military raids after the declaration of state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa on May 14, this year.

A motorist who did not want his name mentioned told our correspondent that, “ I drove from Adamawa- Michika – Bama- Maiduguri road with my passengers, but I have to thank God because when we reached a place along the Firgi area, we saw a lot of dead bodies killed by gunshots and some were even slaughtered beside the road. In fact, my passengers advised me that we should make a u-turn to Michika, but I summoned courage and told them that God is in our control.”

Another security source and a Hospital source in one of the federal hospitals in Maiduguri said, “ We have received over 30 dead bodies of people suspected to be those coming from a wedding Fatiha where most of them wore wedding uniform (Anko, in Hausa) on Saturday evening.
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