CATASTROPHIC

Nigeria’s Chibok Girls: Kidnap by Boko Haram Was Accidental

Mass abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls may have been robbery-gone-wrong.

The kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram may have been accidental and the result of a robbery gone awry, according to secret diaries kept by the Nigerian girls while they were prisoners of the jihadist group. Naomi Adamu—one of the girls taken in April 2014—said in her journal that the insurgents came to the school in Chibok to steal machinery but weren't sure what to do with the girls once they had targeted the building. She wrote, “One boy said they should burn us all, and they (some of the other fighters) said: ‘No, let us take them with us to Sambisa (Boko Haram's remote forest base) ... if we take them to Shekau (the group’s leader), he will know what to do.’”