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Islamic extremist threatens to sell 200 kidnapped girls

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s Islamic extremist leader is threatening to sell the more than 300 teenage schoolgirls abducted from a school in the remote northeast three weeks ago.

In a video received Monday, Abubakar Shekau for the first time claims responsibility for the April 15 abduction in Chibok.

He threatens to attack more schools and abduct more girls

“I abducted your girls,” the leader of the Islamist group Boko Haram says in the video.

“By Allah, I will sell them in the marketplace.”

The hourlong video starts with fighters shooting automatic rifles into the air as they chant, “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.”

It was unclear whether the video was made before or after reports emerged last week that some of the girls had been forced to marry their abductors and that others had been carried into Cameroon and Chad.

In the video, Shekau also says the girls “will remain slaves with us,” apparently referring to the ancient jihadi custom of enslaving women captured in a holy war and using them as sex slaves.

“They are slaves, and I will sell them because I have the market to sell them,” he said in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria.

An intermediary who has said Boko Haram is ready to negotiate ransoms claimed two of the girls have died of snakebite and about 20 are ill. He said Christians among them have been forced to convert to Islam. The man, an Islamic scholar, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Nigeria’s police have said more than 300 girls were taken, with 276 still captive and 53 escaped.

The abduction and the failure to rescue the girls has roused outrage against President Goodluck Jonathan and his officials.

Anger flared Monday when First Lady Patience Jonathan was accused of ordering the arrests of two protest leaders and doubting there was a kidnapping at all.

Ayo Adewuyi, spokesman for the first lady, said that he was unaware of any arrests and that she had not ordered any.

But protest leader Saratu Angus Ndirpaya said State Security Service agents drove her and fellow leader Naomi Mutah Nyadar to a police station Monday after a meeting with Mrs. Johnson and officials at the presidential villa in Abuja, the capital. She said Nyadar remains in detention.

The first lady accused them of fabricating the abductions at the meeting, she said.

“She told so many lies, that we just wanted the government of Nigeria to have a bad name, that we did not want to support her husband’s rule,” Ndirpaya said.

“They said we are Boko Haram and that Mrs. Nyadar is a member of Boko Haram.”