TheCable

One of the 104 Chibok schoolgirls who regained freedom from Boko Haram captivity was “pregnant before her abduction”.

Zannah Mustapha, the lawyer who brokered the two deals, which led to the release of the victims, quoted the girl to have said this, moments before leaving the camp of Boko Haram.

Mustapha told the BBC that all the girls confirmed that they were not molested while in custody.

Kidnapped since 2015, some of them were freed from custody after a series of negotiations between the sect and the federal government.

The first batch comprising 21 of them were released in October 2016 while 82 others were released on May, 6 this year.

“The 21 women were lined up and asked by Boko Haram militants if they had been raped. They all said they were not,” Mustapha told the BBC.

“One of the girls was however seen carrying a baby but she said she was pregnant at the time of her abduction, having got married a few weeks earlier.

“The baby girl in her arms, she said, was her husband’s child.”

The process of asking each of the girls whether they were molested was also repeated when 82 more were released earlier this month.

According to Mustapha, one of about seven Boko Haram militants, who accompanied the 82 girls out of the sect’s hideout, had asked them one after the other: “Throughout the time you were with us, did anyone rape you or touch you?”

He added that each of the girls replied in the negative.

One of them, however, had an amputated limb and was walking with crutches.

According to what Mustapha was told, she had sustained the injury during Nigerian military air strikes against the sect.

The names of the 82 girls were then called out after which Mustapha reportedly announced to them that they are now free.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) vehicles had then arrived to transport them back home.

“When I told them to go to the cars, they all ran,” Mustapha said. “Immediately they entered the vehicles, they started singing for joy. Some shed tears.”