Nigerian Islamists Threaten ‘by Allah’ to Sell Hundreds of Schoolgirls They Abducted

The leader of the Nigerian Islamic extremist group Boko Haram said Allah has “instructed” him to begin selling the estimated 300 teenage girls they abducted last month from their school dormitories in northeast Nigeria.

In a new video, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the April 15 kidnapping and said that plans for more abductions of girls are in the works, the Associated Press reported.

"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," Shekau said as he was flanked by masked men holding AK-47s. "Allah has instructed me to sell them. They are his property and I will carry out his instructions."

In this image made from video received by The Associated Press on Monday, May 5, 2014, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Nigeria's Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, threatened to sell the nearly 300 teenage schoolgirls abducted from a school in the remote northeast three weeks ago. (AP)

The militants abducted the schoolgirls after shooting their way past school guards then loading the teenage girls onto trucks. Some of them escaped by jumping off of the open trucks.

The kidnapping occurred in northeastern Nigeria where there has been a surge of violence by the Boko Haram terrorist group trying to institute Islamic law in the African nation.

TheBlaze is unable to verify the number of girls who were kidnapped. The AP reported that 300 were abducted, while Reuters placed the number around 200.

The AP reported last week that some of the kidnapped young women were being forced to marry their Islamic extremist abductors in exchange for $12, while Boko Haram was negotiating ransoms for the release of others.

In the latest video, militant leader Shekau said the girls "will remain slaves with us." The AP noted that this appeared to refer “to the ancient jihadi custom of enslaving women captured in a holy war, who then can be used for sex.”

"They are slaves and I will sell them because I have the market to sell them," he said.

An unnamed intermediary who has been in contact with Boko Haram told the AP that the Christian girls among those who were kidnapped have been forced to convert to Islam.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” had reportedly been kidnapping girls for use as cooks and sex slaves even before this latest mass abduction.