[LINK] "Girl says father gave her to Boko Haram"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera reports on a terrible atrocity. May the father be punished; may the daughter be helped.

A 13-year-old girl has accused her father of giving her to Nigeria's Boko Haram group that ordered her to explode a suicide bomb in Kano city.

The girl said she and two other females were sent to carry out an attack on a textile market but after the other detonated their bombs, she decided not to complete the mission.

Police Superintendent Adenrele Shinaba said on Wednesday that the girl left her suicide vest on the seat of a taxi that took her to the hospital for treatment of her wounded leg after shrapnel hit her in the market bombing. The taxi driver alerted police who then arrested her.

The girl told a news conference on Wednesday night that her captors asked if she wanted to go to paradise and, when she said yes, explained 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".