"Noor, 17, was abducted by Boko Haram from herhome in Bama, Nigeria last year and is being supported by UNICEF. She was forced to marry afighter and became his second wife. She gave birth to his daughter six months ago. Even though she tried to escape six times her father has rejected her because she is associated with Boko Haram.Read via Daily Mail;Torn from her home in the dead of night and forced to marry a Boko Haram fighter, Noor tried to escape their evil clutches six times before shefinally made it to safety – only to be accused of being a terrorist spy.More than a year after she was snatched from her family she is free, but not only does she havethe child of the man she was forced to marry, she’s an outcast, branded a sympathizer of the very men she fought so hard to escape.‘They wanted to beat me up and make me confess, and kill me because I was a Boko Haram wife," she told the MailOnline.Many of the girls have returned to their families pregnant, or with ‘Boko Haram babies’, and have been rejected by both their families and their communities – fearing they now have ‘bad blood’.‘They (local community) thought I was here to spy on them,’ said Noor, 17, describing the night she escaped to the relative safety of Maiduguri in northern Nigeria.Thousands of kidnapped schoolgirls have escaped as the Nigerian army is advancing in the northern state of Borno – but instead of being welcomed home with open arms, thousands of ‘Boko Haram wives’ are being shunned.Picked up by a local vigilante who recognized her and called her parents, Noor was given the crushing news that her father wanted nothing to do with her or his grandchild.‘My father asked him: “Why did you bring her? You should have left her in Bama”’, said Noor monotonously as she stared at the floor and recounted her horrendous ordeal.Recalling the night she was kidnapped from Bama, her hometown in northeastern Nigeria, theteenager was hiding under the bed with her sister and brother’s wife when three men came.‘We were so scared when we saw the men coming,’ Noor said in a low voice. The girls were spotted easily - the sparse room provide little cover.‘We were begging them and crying "please let us stay here," but they said "no – your friends are with us and we’re teaching them and you must join them".'The men – dressed in shalwar khameez and standard camouflage, guns draped over their shoulders, marched the girls to ‘prison’ – a series of gated mansions abandoned by their owners.For months the girls were forced to recite the Koran by the wives of Boko Haram fighters, and were branded as ‘unbelievers’ over and over again.Determined to escape, Noor tried six times to flee.But each time she was spotted by former neighbours who were either sympathetic to the group, or terrified they would be punished if they could be implicated and complicit with her escape.Once she got as far as mixing with a crowd walking to Maiduguri, but was recognized and forced back to the prison.One day the fighters came to the girls and informed them they had been married.‘They said we have found suitors for you and we will marry you off. We refused but they said you have to go and if you don’t we’re going to beat you. You have to go – the Imam has married you.’Noor made one last ditch attempt to escape to her father’s house, but was followed and the men came again for her the next day.
Daily Mail
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