Spanish police travel to Nigeria to help secure kidnapped school girls’ Release. SPAIN’S offer of help in the search and release of the 223 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by a radical Islamic group has been welcomed by the government of the African country. Four members of the Spanish police force’s specialist kidnap and ransom squad, at the instigation of the ministry of foreign affairs, will be travelling to Nigeria in the next few days. All of them are highly experienced in abductions involving highly sensitive negotiations, in human trafficking and in dealing with Islamic sects and hostage-taking networks based in African countries. Spain’s kidnap release record is exceptional, with numerous successful cases of the country’s citizens being freed unharmed from captivity abroad through careful contact and top-secret dealings, with recent high-profile cases being reported in Western Sahara, Somalia, Mali and Colombia, including that of the daughter of well-known High Court judge Fernando Marlaska. The girls were kidnapped from their school in Chibok, in the northern state of Borno on April 14 by the extremist group Boko Haram, whose name in the local housa language means ‘Western education is forbidden’. Having launched a military régime in 2009 and striving to create an Islamic state in Nigeria under Sharia law, Boko Haram owned up immediately to being behind the mass abduction and said they had taken the girls hostage because ‘they should be married, not going to school’. These 223 girls are among millions worldwide who risk their lives in order to pursue a basic education. Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau says the girls will not be released unless prisoners from the sect are set free from jail, and has threatened to sell them as slaves. A recent video shown by Boko Haram as a threat to the authorities features a number of the girls reciting extracts from the Q’ran and wearing hiyabs, or Muslim headgear. They are believed to be hidden deep in a rainforest of some 38,000 square kilometres in size – or, as British Prime Minister David Cameron describes it, three times the size of Wales. Chibok is a multi-faith town and most of the girls kidnapped are said to be Christian, although a sizeable minority are Muslim. Cameron, along with US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, have joined the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign and have offered their help to the Nigerian authorities to help get the schoolgirls freed. CLICK FOR DETAILS; news.gnom.es/news/spanish-police-travel-to-nigeria-to-help-secure-kidnapped-schoolgirls-release
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 19:45:57 +0000
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