Washington Times | Guy Taylor | July 7, 2019
The horror that enveloped Rebecca Sharibu’s world in early 2018 when her 14-year-old daughter, Leah, was kidnapped by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria felt like it might suddenly end when news broke, after just a few weeks of back-channel efforts, that the more than 100 girls taken in the raid were being released.
But then it became clear that one girl, Leah, was being held back by the jihadis because she refused to renounce her Christian faith. For Mrs. Sharibu, the nightmare would only get worse.
Five months after the others were set free, a grainy video emerged of a sad, frightened-looking girl wearing a light brown Islamic head covering, a hijab. It was Leah, and she was pleading for Nigeria’s government to respond to the demands of the jihadi terrorist group Boko Haram, which has aligned itself with the Islamic State.
“I just started crying,” Mrs. Sharibu said in a recent interview with The Washington Times. “That was the only time I saw her and heard from her. … I don’t know what is happening to her.”