160 Days After Abduction: Chibok Girls Tell How They Were Raped Every Day -- Negotiator Stephen Davis

From a person who seems to have an insight into the operations of Boko
Haram came chilling accounts of girls taken captive by the terror
group.

"Girls tell how they were raped every day, week after week. One girl
was raped every day, sometimes several times a day by groups of men.
Some did not survive the ordeal," Stephen Davis, an Australian
negotiator, who visited Nigeria to mediate the release of the Chibok
girls captured by the Islamist group, recounted in an article
contributed to Sunday Vanguard, titled, 'When I met Asari and agreed a
peace deal.'

The negotiator spoke on a day it emerged that Boko Haram and
government representatives held talks on swapping the group's members
in prison with the kidnapped schoolgirls. At the talks, government
reportedly rejected Boko Haram's demand to exchange 30 of its
commanders in prison with 30 of the Chibok girls.

Davis was responding to a newspaper interview by a former Niger-Delta
militant leader, Alhaji Asari-Dokubo, in which he claimed the almost
300 girls, reportedly captured in Government Secondary School, Chibok,
Borno State by Boko Haram, may not have been seized after all.

By this weekend, the girls, some of whom apparently escaped from
their captors, have spent over 160 days in captivity.

The schoolgirls were seized on April 14.

"The escaped girls tell harrowing stories of rape and abuse. They are
traumatised and require medical treatment and counselling. These girls
are testament to the horrifying truth about the kidnapping," the
negotiator stated.

Davis made a strong case for action against Boko Haram sponsors to end
insurgency in the North-east.

He also recounted his encounter with Dokubo at the peak of the
Niger-Delta militancy during the Obasanjo administration, leading to a
truce between the militants and security forces. Read Stephen Davis'
piece here.

Chibok: FG, Boko Haram in swap deal

Meanwhile, a report, yesterday, said government officials and the
International Committee of the Red Cross had talks with Boko Haram
about swapping prisoners of the Islamist terror group for the
Chibok school girls kidnapped in April.

CNN, quoting a source involved in the negotiations, said officials
met four times in mid-August with two senior members of Boko Haram in
Abuja.

The swap would involve the release of 30 Boko Haram commanders in the
custody of government, according to the source, who asked not to be
named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Boko Haram reportedly submitted a list with the names of 30 members
who were either convicted or awaiting trial on terror offenses.

"The two Boko Haram negotiators assured the ICRC and government
negotiators that the girls were never raped, were never used as sex
slaves and were never sexually assaulted," said the source.

But this claim is disputed by Davis.
The terror group was said to have expressed a willingness for a swap
with the ICRC at an undisclosed location, according to the source. But
there was disagreement on some terms, including the number of girls
involved in the swap.

Boko Haram, it was learnt, insisted on an even swap -- 30 girls for 30
commanders -- but the government refused.

"They were only ready to release one to one, which the government was
not going to accept," the source said.

Another hurdle in the talks was Boko Haram's insistence on meeting the
imprisoned 30 members involved in the swap, but they only had contact
with six at a prison outside Abuja, the source said.

The six prisoners included Kabiru Sokoto, a senior Boko Haram
commander convicted in December 2013 of terror charges related to the
deadly Christmas Day bombing of a church in Madallah in 2011.

"ICRC couldn't find where the remaining 24 were being detained," the
source said.

The Boko Haram negotiators said they would get back to government
after consulting with their superiors.

ICRC sources declined to comment.