Seized Nigerian girls 'taken abroad'

29 April 2014 Last updated at 14:19 Boko Haram has often targeted educational establishments Some of the schoolgirls abducted by suspected militant Islamists in northern Nigeria are believed to have been taken to neighbouring states, a local leader has told the BBC.

Pogo Bitrus said there had been "sightings" of gunmen crossing with the girls into Cameroon and Chad.

Some of the girls had been forced to marry the militants, he added.

Mr Bitrus said 230 girls were missing since militants attacked the school in Chibok, Borno state, two weeks ago.

The Islamist group Boko Haram has been blamed for the night-time raid on the school hostel in Chibok town. It has not yet commented on the allegation.

The girls were seized from their hostel late at night

Mr Bitrus, a Chibok community leader, said 43 of the girls had "regained their freedom" after escaping, while 230 were still in captivity. This is a higher number than previous estimates, however he was adamant it was the correct figure.

'Slavery'

The students were about to sit their final year exam and so are mostly aged between 16 and 18.

"Some of them have been taken across Lake Chad and some have been ferried across the border into parts of Cameroon," he told the BBC.

Mr Bitrus said there were also reports that the insurgents had married some of the girls.

"We learned that one of the 'grooms' brought his 'wife' to a neighbouring town in Cameroon and kept her there," he told the BBC.

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I'm crying now as community leader to alert the world to what's happening so that some pressure would be brought to bare on government to act”

End Quote Pogo Bitrus Chibok community leader "It's a medieval kind of slavery," he added.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau first threatened to treat captured women and girls as slaves in a video released in May 2013.

It fuelled concern at the time that the group is adhering to the ancient Islamic belief that women captured during war are slaves with whom their "masters" can have sex, correspondents say.

Mr Bitrus said everyone in the community felt as though their own daughters had been abducted.

Men were "braving it out", but women were "crying and wailing", he said.

"Whether it is my niece or whoever it doesn't matter. We are all one people," Mr Bitrus told the BBC.

"That's why I'm crying now as community leader to alert the world to what's happening so that some pressure would be brought to bare on government to act and ensure the release of these girls."

The government has said the security forces are searching for the girls, but its critics say it is not doing enough.

Boko Haram has staged a wave of attacks in northern Nigeria in recent years, with an estimated 1,500 killed in the violence and subsequent security crackdown this year alone.

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Time taken to reject his mercy plea is Death Row Bhullars ray of hope

New Delhi Citing the precedent of a death sentence being commuted to a life term because considerable time was taken to decide on the mercy petition, Tihar Jail authorities are set to approach the Delhi government for ?clarification? on the execution of Devender Pal Singh Bhullar who was sentenced to death for a 1993 terror attack in New Delhi that killed nine people.

Bhullar is undergoing treatment at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) for ?hypertension, psychiatric illness and suicidal tendencies?. He has been recuperating at the facility for the last four months.

His execution has not been stayed by the Supreme Court and his mercy plea has been rejected by the President. But the President took more than eight years to decide.

Officials in Tihar are in the process of drafting a letter for instructions on ?proposed future course of action? given the circumstances.

?We need to obtain clarifications from the Delhi government in this regard because of Bhullar?s illness and in view of a precedent, or what we call an unwritten law, whereby if a mercy petition takes too long to be decided, the punishment is legitimately expected to be condoned to life term. In our communication, we also intend to highlight the time consumed in deciding his mercy plea,? sources in Tihar told The Indian Express.

Jail officials pointed to the precedent ? the 1989 verdict in the case of Khemchand which has not been overturned by a superior court.

In the Khemchand vs State case, the Delhi High Court commuted the death sentence of Khemchand from death to life sentence, solely on the ground that the President had taken more than five years in deciding his mercy plea. Convicted of killing a man (who had an affair with his daughter), his wife and their two children, Khemchand was sentenced to death by Delhi High Court in 1983 and the Supreme Court upheld his punishment in 1984.

Days later, Khemchand filed a mercy petition before the President. Ultimately, in December 1988, he was informed that his mercy petition had been rejected by the President, prompting him to file another petition before the High Court.

Now 70, Khemchand based his plea on the short ground that ?the inordinate delay of more than 65 months in the execution of the sentence of death had caused inhuman degradation and misery?.

A division bench headed by Justice M K Chawla then decided to delve on: ?Whether in a case, where after the sentence of death is given, the accused is made to undergo inhuman and degrading punishment, and the execution of the sentence is endlessly delayed, as a result of which the accused is made to suffer the most excruciating agony and anguish, is it not open to a court of appeal or a court exercising writ jurisdiction, in an appropriate case to take note of circumstances when it is brought to its notice and give relief as prayed for, if necessary.?

Justice Chawla subsequently reduced Khemchand?s punishment from death to life term, noting that owing to the delay, ?the petitioner, an old and ailing person, had been kept on tenterhooks for the last more than five years? and any more delay would ?only add to the further agony of uncertainty, mental torture, physical pain and the anguish of alternating hope and despair?.

Bhullar?s lawyer K T S Tulsi said that in the face of the atypical facts of this case ? one of the three judges of the apex court had in fact acquitted Bhullar of all charges, and settled legal position, the punishment must get reduced to life term.

?Khemchand?s case is an unrebuttable legal position in Delhi. Moreover, while a five-judge Constitution Bench in Triveniben vs State of Gujarat, had refused to place a time cap on disposal of mercy petitions, its subsequent judgments on commuting death sentence to life hinged on the proposition that speedy justice, particularly in sensitive cases concerning life and death, should be the resolve of the executive too,? Tulsi said.

He said his petition for reduction of sentence for Bhullar is still pending before the Supreme Court and he would now also wait for the Delhi government to take a stand on the issue. ?I will wait for a reply from the state government to Tihar Jail authorities and chart the future course accordingly,? he said.

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Time taken to reject his mercy plea is Death Row B...

?We need to obtain clarifications from the Delhi government in this regard because of Bhullar?s illness and in view of a precedent, or what we call an unwritten law, whereby if a mercy petition takes too long to be decided, the punishment is legitimately expected to be condoned to life term. In our communication, we also intend to highlight the time consumed in deciding his mercy plea,? sources in Tihar told The Indian Express.

Jail officials pointed to the precedent ? the 1989 verdict in the case of Khemchand which has not been overturned by a superior court.

In the Khemchand vs State case, the Delhi High Court commuted the death sentence of Khemchand from death to life sentence, solely on the ground that the President had taken more than five years in deciding his mercy plea. Convicted of killing a man (who had an affair with his daughter), his wife and their two children, Khemchand was sentenced to death by Delhi High Court in 1983 and the Supreme Court upheld his punishment in 1984.

... contd.

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