TheCable

Three women who claim to have been held in the same camps with the Chibok schoolgirls have said they witnessed occasions when the teenage girls committed murder.

The women told BBC that the insurgents had radicalised the students abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno state on April 14, 2014.

Seventeen-year-old Miriam (not her real name) fled Boko Haram after being held for six months. She was forced to marry a militant, and is now pregnant with his child.

Recounting her first days in the camp she said: “They told to us get ready, that they were going to marry us off.”

She and four others refused.

“They came back with four men, they slit their throats in front of us. They then said that this will happen to any girl that refuses to get married,”

Faced with that choice, she agreed to marry, and was then repeatedly raped.

“There was so much pain,” she said. “I was only there in body… I couldn’t do anything about it.”

While in captivity, Miriam described meeting some of the Chibok schoolgirls. She said they were kept in a separate house to the other captives.

Miriam is pregnant with the child of a member of Boko Haram

“They told us: ‘You women should learn from your husbands because they are giving their blood for the cause. We must also go to war for Allah.'”

She said the girls had been “brainwashed” and that she had witnessed some of them kill several men in her village.

“They were Christian men. They [the Boko Haram fighters] forced the Christians to lie down. Then the girls cut their throats.”

Anna, aged 60, is one of them. She fled a camp in the Sambisa forest in December where she was held for five months. She now sits beneath a tree close to the cathedral in Yola, capital of Adamawa state. Her only possessions are the clothes she ran away in.

She said she saw some of the Chibok schoolgirls just before she fled the forest.

“They had guns,” she said.

Anna, a former Boko Haram captive, claims some of the girls were forced to kill

When pressed on how she could be sure that it is was the Chibok schoolgirls that she’d seen, Anna said: “They [Boko Haram] didn’t hide them. They told us: ‘These are your teachers from Chibok.’

“They shared the girls out as teachers to teach different groups of women and girls to recite the Koran,” Anna recalled.

“Young girls who couldn’t recite were being flogged by the Chibok girls.”

Like Miriam, Anna also said she had seen some of the Chibok schoolgirls commit murder.

“People were tied and laid down and the girls took it from there… The Chibok girls slit their throats,” said Anna.

Anna said she felt no malice towards the girls she had seen taking part in the violence, only pity.

“It’s not their fault they were forced to do it.” she added. “Anyone who sees the Chibok girls has to feel sorry for them.”

Exposing women to extreme violence seemed to be a strategy used by Boko Haram to strip them of their identity and humanity, so they could be forced to accept the militants’ ideology.

Faith, a Christian, says Boko Haram fighters tried to convert her to their version of Islam.

Faith (not her real name) aged 16, who is Christian, described how Boko Haram fighters tried to force her to convert to their version of Islam.

“Every day at dawn they would come and throw water over us and order us to wake up and start praying,” she said.

“Then one day they brought in a man wearing uniform. They made us all line up and then said to me: ‘Because you are always crying, you will must kill this man.’

“I was given the knife and ordered to cut his neck. I said I couldn’t do it.

“They cut his throat in front of me. That’s when I passed out.”

Faith said she had seen at least one Chibok schoolgirl who had been married off to a Boko Haram militant during her four months in captivity.

“She was just like any of the Boko Haram wives,” she explained. “We are more scared of the wives than the husbands.”

“I can’t get the images out of my head,” said Anna, breaking down in tears. “I see people being slaughtered. I just pray that the nightmares don’t return.”

For others, the nightmare is continuing every day. Miriam is expecting her baby any day now.

“I hope that the baby is a girl,” she said. “I would love her more than any boy. I’m scared of having a boy.”

Miriam’s future is bleak. She is terrified her “husband” will find her and kill her for running away. Her community has also rejected her.

“People consider me an outcast,” she said.

“They remind me that I have Boko Haram inside me.”

BBC says it has not been able to independently verify the information.

Apart from the girls who managed to escape, none of the over 200 girls have been rescued despite the assurances of the government.

The last time they were seen was when Abubakar Shekau, leader of Boko Haram, released a video to confirm that the group was holding them hostage.

At the time, Shekau threatened to marry them off.