[ 2014-12-26 ]

13-year-old girl: My father gave me to Boko Haram
A 13-year-old says her father gave her to Boko
Haram extremists and that she was arrested after
refusing to explode a suicide bomb in Kano,
Nigeria's second largest city in the north.

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Nigeria has suffered numerous suicide bombings in
recent months carried out by girls and young
women. That has raised fears that the insurgents
are using kidnapped girls.

The girl told a news conference Wednesday night
that she saw many people being buried alive at the
Boko Haram camp where her father took her in
Bauchi state, east of Kano.

She said her captors asked if she wanted to go to
paradise and, when she said yes, explained she
would have to be a suicide bomber.

"When I was told I would have to die to enter
paradise, that I would have to explode a bomb and
die, I said I cannot do it," she said.

When they threatened to kill her, she allowed them
to strap her into a vest primed with explosives,
saying "I was afraid to be buried alive."

Two other girls detonated their bombs at Kano's
textile market on Dec. 10. Police said the attack
killed four people and wounded seven, including
the girl.

The West African nation's home-grown Boko Haram
group attracted international condemnation when
its fighters kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from a
boarding school in northeast Chibok town in April.
Dozens escaped but 219 remain missing.

Thousands of people have been killed and 1.6
million driven from their homes in the 5-year-old
uprising to create an Islamic state in Nigeria,
Africa's most populous nation of 160 million
people divided between mainly Muslims in the north
and Christians in the south.

Police Superintendent Adenrele Shinaba said the
girl was arrested in the hospital with a leg
wound. A taxi driver took her to the hospital, and
she said she left her suicide vest on the seat.
The driver alerted police.

Shinaba said she will remain in custody while
investigations continue. He said they had been
unable to find her father, who the girl said
belongs to Boko Haram.

Source - AP

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