A Nigerian military court has found ten generals guilty in providing arms and intelligence to the Islamic terror group Boko Haram.
In addition to the generals, several other senior military officers were found to be telling the Islamic terror groups the sizes of military units and troop locations, allowing the terrorists to attack in places the government security forces were weak.
Boko Haram is currently the subject of an international manhunt because of almost 300 young girls kidnapped from a school. The Islamic terrorists are threatening to force the girls into marriages to Islamic men and to sell them as slaves if they refuse to convert to Islam.
The government’s prosecutors say that some of the military leaders convicted yesterday had been undermining the efforts to find the missing girls along with working to destroy the effectiveness of the government’s offensive against the Islamists.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has said he believed there were members of the military and possibly members of the Cabinet who were supporters of and members of Boko Haram. Jonathan claims the government has now located the kidnapped girls but has yet to find a way to save them without endangering their lives.
While the international community has been focused on a group of almost 300 girls kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram, the same terrorists have quietly been conducting a killing spree of Christians in northern Nigeria.
The terrorists killed at least 29 Christians in the last two days in assaults on both churches and Christian communities in Borno state.
At least 21 people are dead from an attack on the Church of Christ in Nations church in Gwoza. The church was in the middle of a worship service when the Islamic terrorist invaded and began to systematically gun down anyone inside the sanctuary. Rev. Moses Thliza of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria in the same village said that several dozen were injured and the death toll is likely to rise.
The next day, the terrorists attacked several Christian villages. At least six churches were burned to the ground, eight Christians killed and several dozen seriously wounded. One Christian leader said the number of burned homes of Christians could not be counted.
The unrest among the Nigerian people regarding the government’s inability to rescue 300 kidnapped girls from the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram is starting to have nationwide impact.
The National Union of Teachers announced their members will not show up to teach as a general strike against the government’s failure to rescue the Christian girls kidnapped from a school April 14th.
“All schools nationwide shall be closed as the day will be our day of protest against the abduction of the Chibok female students and the heartless murder of the 173 teachers,” Union President Michael Olukoya told reporters.
The teachers say that the kidnapping of the girls and the government’s apparent weakness in stopping the Islamic terror attacks on Christians puts all youth in the country in danger.
“Children’s lives are being threatened, kidnapping all over the place, stealing, maiming of life, that’s what we are saying should stop,” said teacher Ojo Veronica.
Nigerian citizens in the northern part of the country have now reportedly begin taking up arms and forming militias for the sole purpose of seeking the kidnapped girls. One group attacked a Boko Haram encampment and killed 10 terrorists.
The leader of the Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram has released a new video where he declares his group is at war with Christians throughout the world.
“We know what is happening in this world,” Abubakar Shekau says, “It is a Jihad war against Christians and Christianity. It is a war against western education, democracy and constitution.”
Shekau goes on to say that even with the kidnapping of the girls and spending the last few years launching terrorist attacks on towns throughout the northern part of the country, the Jihad has not yet begun in Nigeria.
“We have not started,” he says, “next time we are going inside [Nigeria’s capital] Abuja. We are going to refinery and town of Christians.”
He goes on to say the Koran tells him that he needs to kill anyone who is Christian or associated with Christians because that is Allah’s will.
The group, whose name means “Western Education is sinful”, is the subject of a manhunt by Nigerian military officials and western air forces after their kidnapping of over 300 Christian girls from a school and village last month.
A Nigerian girl from the same village as 270 of the girls kidnapped by Islamic extremists Boko Haram is speaking out about her family being slaughtered by the terrorists.
Deborah Peters delivered a talk at the Hudson Institute where she talked about her brother and father getting gunned down by the terrorists. Peters said that she was at home with her brother on December 21, 2011 when gunfire broke out in her hometown of Chibok.
“So my brother called my dad and told him not to come home because they are fighting and my father told him to just forget about it,” Peters said.
Her father came home and a few hours later the terrorists stormed into their home and demanded her father, a Christian pastor whose church had been destroyed earlier in the year by the Islamists, renounce his faith in Christ.
“He told him that he would rather die than to go to hellfire,” Peters said. The terrorists then shot him three times in the chest while she watched. Then they turned their guns on her younger brother because they said he would grow up to be a pastor if they didn’t kill him.
Emmanuel Ogebe, an international human rights lawyer, attended the event and said that what we’re seeing now has been happening for years.
“What is happening now is this is persecution on steroids. Northern Nigerian Christians are used to being killed a couple of times a year,” Ogebe said. “But for terrorists to come out and abduct 300 kids, this is where Northern Nigerian Christians are saying ‘okay, we didn’t sign up for this.'”
Analysts in Africa say the kidnapping of almost 300 girls by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram could be a mistake that leads to the destruction of the group.
Rev. Kristopher Keating of World Horizons USA, said the uproar in Nigeria and around the world is putting a focus on the terrorists they didn’t anticipate. The Nigerian people are also taking advantage of the sudden world stage to show the suffering the Islamists have brought to the country.
“People are hungry to know that their suffering here is not going unnoticed, that reports of this particular instance of large scale abduction are, for seemingly the first time in this country, causing people to take to demonstration and public outcry against Boko Haram,” Keating told The Christian Post on Monday evening. “This could be a catalyzing event that breaks Boko Haram in Nigeria.”
Rev. Keating said many Christian leaders from around the world are traveling to the African nation to lead worship and prayer services to ask God to bring the girls home safely and for protection over the soldiers who are trying to bring the terrorists to justice.
Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has released a video where they offer to release some of the girls they kidnapped in return for terrorists behind held in Nigerian prisons.
Terrorist leader Abubakar Shekau says in the 17-minute video that he will only release the girls that have not “submitted” to the terrorists, which from the video implies they have converted to Islam and are serving as slaves to the terrorists.
“The girls, these girls you occupy yourself with…we have indeed liberated them,” Shekau said. “These girls have become Muslims. We will never release them until after you release our brethren. Here I mean those girls who have not submitted.”
The international search for the kidnapped girls is now increasing in speed as teams from the United States and Great Britain arrive in Nigeria. The international effort is very diverse with countries as small as Israel sending in special forces units to help try to find and save the girls.
The United States Department of State announced they are offering to send a team into Nigeria to find the over 200 girls kidnapped by the Islamic terror group Boko Haram.
The offer comes as Boko Haram has made another brazen attack on a Nigerian village, murdering 150 people at a crowded outdoor marketplace. The terrorists laughed and yelled “Allahu Akbar” as they threw improvised bombs and fired rocket-propelled grenades into innocent civilians.
The terrorists also set fire to buildings where people tried to take shelter from the murderous rampage.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. will establish a “coordination cell” to provide intelligence, investigations and expertise in hostage negotiation. U.S. military personnel will be part of the cell and based at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said they will be sending experts to assist the American team.
Boko Haram has kidnapped more girls.
The Islamic terrorist group, currently the subject of an international hunt after kidnapping over 200 girls from a school last month, abducted eight more girls from northeastern Nigeria overnight.
The girls were aged 12 to 15 like the other girls the group has kidnapped.
Residents of the village of Warabe said that the terrorists fired on homes in the village during the raid.
“They were many, and all of them carried guns. They came in two vehicles painted in army color. They started shooting in our village,” a villager told Yahoo news.
The girls were reportedly thrown into a truck with livestock and food and rushed out of the village. The Islamists have not commented whether those girls will be auctioned off as they threatened to do with the first batch of kidnapped girls.
Nigerian officials admitted they mislead the media regarding an attack by Islamic extremists Boko Haram where they invaded a girl’s school and carried off the students.
Security officials had initially said that 85 girls were taken but now admit the terrorist group seized 234 girls.
The admission from the regional military officials came after the governor of Borno state demanded to be taken to the site of the attacks and be allowed to question troops that were supposed to be protecting the school.
Military police say they are in “hot pursuit” of the kidnappers but none of the girls have been found. The girls, between 16 and 18, were reportedly science students at the school undergoing physics exams.
Boko Haram has pledged to kidnap Christian girls in the region to force into conversion to Islam and forced marriages. Girls who have been rescued from previous Boko Haram kidnappings say they were forced to be cooks and sex slaves.
Boko Haram has increased their actions this year, with over 1,500 people killed and thousands kidnapped.