Their faces scratched and bleeding, the pitiful remains of their
once-smart school uniforms ripped and filthy, the two teenage girls were
tethered to trees, wrists bound with rope and left in a clearing in the
Nigerian bush to die by Islamist terror group Boko Haram.
Despite having been molested and dragged through the bush, they were alive – but only just – in the sweltering tropical heat and humidity.
This grim scene was discovered by 15-year-old Baba Goni. ‘They were seated on the ground at the base of the trees, their legs stretched out in front of them – they were hardly conscious,’ says Baba, who acted as a guide for one of the many vigilante teams searching for the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted from their school last month by Boko Haram – and now at the centre of a concerted international campaign for their freedom.
The horrific scene he and his comrades encountered, a week after the kidnap early on April 15, was in thorny scrubland near the village of Ba’ale, an hour’s drive from Chibok, where 276 girls aged 16 to 18 were taken from their boarding school dormitories – with 223 still missing. It was still two weeks before social media campaigns and protests would prick the Western world’s conscience over the abduction.
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