Kano, Nigeria: A 13-year-old says her father gave her to Boko Haram extremists and that she was arrested after refusing to explode a suicide bomb in Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city in the north.
She told a news conference on Wednesday that she saw many people being buried alive at the Boko Haram camp where her father took her in Bauchi state, east of Kano.
She said her captors asked if she wanted to go to paradise and, when she said ‘Yes’, they told her that she would have to be a suicide bomber.
“When I was told I would have to die to enter paradise, that I would have to explode a bomb and die, I said I cannot do it,” she said.
When they threatened to kill her, she allowed them to strap her into a vest primed with explosives, saying “I was afraid to be buried alive.”
Two other girls detonated their bombs at Kano’s textile market on December 10. Police said the attack killed four people and wounded seven, including the girl.
