Recent U.S. surveillance flights over northeastern
Nigeria showed what appeared to be large groups
of girls held together in remote locations, raising
hopes among domestic and foreign officials that
they are among the group that Boko Haram
abducted from a boarding school in April, U.S. and
Nigerian officials said.
The surveillance suggests that at least some of the
219 schoolgirls still held captive haven’t been
forced into marriage or sex slavery, as had been
feared, but instead are being used as bargaining
chips for the release of prisoners.
A screengrab taken on May 12, 2014, from a video
of Nigerian Islamist
The U.S. aerial imagery matches what Nigerian
officials say they hear from northern Nigerians
who have interacted with the Islamist insurgency:
that some of Boko Haram’s most famous set of
captives are getting special treatment, compared
with the hundreds of other girls the group is
suspected to have kidnapped. Boko Haram
appears to have seen the schoolgirls as of higher
value, given the global attention paid to their
plight, those officials said.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who faces
re-election in February, is under political pressure
to secure the girls’ release, with some people
urging him to agree to a prisoner swap.
His government has ruled out a rescue operation,
saying it is unwilling to risk the girls’ lives, or a
prisoner swap.
“We don’t exchange innocent people for criminals.
That is not in the cards,” said Mr. Jonathan’s
spokesman, Reuben Abati, last week in an
interview.
In early July, U.S. surveillance flights over
northeastern Nigeria spotted a group of 60 to 70
girls held in an open field, said two U.S. defense
officials. Late last month, they spotted a set of
roughly 40 girls in a different field.
When surveillance flights returned, both sets of
girls had been moved. U.S. intelligence analysts
say they don’t have enough information to
confirm whether the two groups of girls they saw
are the same, they said.
They also can’t say whether those groups included
any of the girls the group has held since April. But
U.S. and Nigerian officials said they believe they
are indeed those schoolgirls.
“It’s unusual to find a large group of young
women like that in an open space,” said one U.S.
defense official. “We’re assuming they’re not a
rock band of hippies out there camping.”
A wave of intermediaries acting on their own has
tried to negotiate the girls’ release, Mr. Abati said,
adding that the president has neither authorized
nor discouraged those efforts.
Several of those intermediaries have said Boko
Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has ordered
his fighters to treat the girls as valuable hostages
—not sex slaves—one senior Nigerian security
adviser said.
“He gave a directive that anybody found touching
any of the girls should be killed immediately,” the
adviser said. “If true, it is cheering.”
It would also show that Boko Haram is trying to
follow an al Qaeda tactic of swapping hostages for
money and political gain.
The group is accelerating its kidnapping of
foreigners and politicians: Over the past two
months, it has been blamed for abducting a
German expatriate, 10 Chinese laborers in nearby
Cameroon and the wife of Cameroon’s deputy
prime minister.
Boko Haram has used hostages in the past to
demand the exchange of its prisoners held in
both Nigeria and Cameroon, which was one of the
conditions for the release of a French family from
captivity last year.
Now, the group appears to be testing the
bargaining power of a group of girls who had
been ordinary teenagers at a school—until their
abduction on the night of April 14. That night,
fighters with the Islamist insurgency—which is
opposed to modern education— stormed a
boarding school and drove 276 girls away hours
before their final exams. Fifty-seven later
escaped.
The captivity of the rest became a cause célèbre,
prompting a Twitter campaign, #
BringBackOurGirls, that was joined by notable
figures including Michelle Obama and Hillary
Clinton. It also spurred Boko Haram’s latest effort
to get its captives released from crowded Nigerian
prisons—a long-standing grievance. Three months
after seizing the girls, Boko Haram’s leader, Mr.
Shekau, appeared in a video demanding a
prisoner exchange. “You are saying bring back our
girls,” thundered the bearded gunman, before
firing his AK-47 into the air. “We are saying bring
back our men!”
Dozens of demonstrators still gather in the capital
each day to press for the girls’ freedom.
Their rallies have become a referendum on
whether Nigerian women—particularly poor,
young, Muslim girls—are valued by a government
of mostly wealthy, elderly, Christian men.
Mr. Abati said Mr. Jonathan has worked tirelessly
to win the girls’ freedom.
It isn’t clear how many of the girls Boko Haram
can deliver. A former Nigerian president,
Olusegun Obasanjo, who has a history of contact
with the group, has said some of the girls are
likely dead or pregnant. Only about 130 of them—
out of 219 missing— appeared in the sole video
of the girls that Boko Haram has ever provided.
Meanwhile, the international effort to find the
girls has waned: The U.S. military is now carrying
out just one surveillance flight a day, mostly by
manned aircraft, totaling only 35 to 40 hours a
week, said U.S. defense officials, as drones have
been shifted back toward other operations.
Some accounts suggest the burden of providing
for scores of girls has become a point of
dissension in Boko Haram’s ranks.
In July, four girls and women aged 16 to 22 hid in
their bedrooms as Boko Haram fighters broke
into their home in the town of Damboa, they each
said in an interview last week. They feared they
would be kidnapped.
When their aunt, Fatima Abba, argued on their
behalf, the roughly 20 Boko Haram insurgents
decided not to kidnap them—and instead began
to complain about the scores of schoolgirls they
already have.
“They are always crying. They behave like
children,” Ms. Abba quoted the Boko Haram
fighters as saying of the schoolgirls. “We don’t
want them around.”

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/08/us-surveillance-flights-spot-abducted-chibok-girls/

Abok1:
And the question is, if they've been spotted, why is nothing being done? By announcing that they've been spotted without acting could make the insurgents move them to another location. No one heard anything when Osama was spotted, we only knew about it when he was killed, that's intelligence.

bro!! Seems like a mystery tho
More like a question for the gods
I can record its not the first time they av said this..

Is the sighting for the fun and pleasure of the Macdonald Burger eating American Spy or for the hearing of the pepper soup loving pot belly Abuja loving Nigerian Army generals, what is the need for this hopeless news?