The Congregation of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad, aka Boko Haram, has pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State’s caliphate.
“Boko Haram accused of crimes against humanity by the UN after reports the Islamists have slaughtered female slaves and used children as ‘human bombs’ in Nigeria,” by Sara Malm, MailOnline, April 2, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Boko Haram fighters have been murdering dozens of young women and girls they had taken as ‘wives’ and using children as ‘expendable cannon fodder’, the U.N.’s human rights chief said today.
As the Islamist militant group has retreated from parts of northeastern Nigeria, ‘gruesome scenes of mass graves and further evident signs of slaughter,’ has been brought to light, Zeid Raad al-Hussein told a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Boko Haram’s reported use of children as shields and human bombs would, if confirmed, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, he said.
This comes in response to last week’s reports that hundreds of women and children had been seized from Nigerian primary schools by Boko Haram militants to be used as ‘human shields’.
The Islamic militants took as many as 500 adults and children from primary schools in the north-eastern town of Damasak in late February, Mike Omeri, spokesman for the fight against Boko Haram, confirmed.
‘Boko Haram rushed to primary schools they took children and adults that they are using as shields to protect themselves from the menacing advance of troops,’ he added.
There has also been eye-witness reports of the insurgents slaughtering dozens of Nigerian women who had been forced to marry Boko Haram fighters, before a battle with government troops in the northeast town of Bama.
Witnesses said the women’s Islamist militant ‘husbands’ feared they would be killed by advancing troops, and murdered their ‘wives’ to prevent them from subsequently marrying soldiers or ‘infidels’.
Mr Al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also told the council that there are ‘persistent and credible reports’ of serious rights violations by Nigerian and other security forces responding to Boko Haram….