Rescued Nigerian girl says she would rather be with the Boko Haram militant who kidnapped and impregnated her

 

Almost a year after she was rescued from Boko Haram captivity by the Nigerian army, Zara John, 16, is still in love with one of the fighters who abducted her and impregnated her, AlJazeera reports.

She was delighted to discover that she was pregnant with his child following a urine and blood test carried out by a doctor in the refugee camp to which she was taken after her rescue.

"I wanted to give birth to my child so that I could have someone to replace his father, since I cannot reconnect with him again," said Zara, one of hundreds of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram during a seven-year insurgency in northeast Nigeria.

But any decision over the baby was taken out of her hands. Her father drowned during flooding in 2010 so her uncles intervened. Some were adamant that they did not want Boko Haram offspring in their family - and insisted on an abortion. Others felt the child should not be blamed for its father's crimes. In the end, the majority carried the vote and Zara was allowed to keep her child, a son she named Usman who is now seven months old.

"Everybody in the family has embraced the child," Zara in a telephone interview, asking that her location remain undisclosed. "My uncle just bought him tins of Cerelac [instant cereal] and milk."

Zara was 14 when Boko Haram members fighting to establish an Islamic state raided her village of Izge, in northeast Nigeria, in February 2014.

They razed homes in the village, slaughtered men and loaded women, girls and children on to trucks.

Two of Zara's brothers were out of town when the assailants struck in one of a wave of hit-and-run attacks on villages, as well as suicide bombings, on places of worship or markets.

Zara's mother fell off one of the overloaded trucks but tried to chase after the vehicle that was ferrying away her only daughter and her four-year-old son, but was unable to keep up as it drove 22km to Bita.

At the time, Bita and other surrounding towns near the Sambisa forest were in Boko Haram control.

"As soon as we arrived, they told us that we were now their slaves," Zara recalled

Her days were spent doing chores and learning the tenets of her new religion, Islam, until two months later when she was given away in marriage to Ali, a Boko Haram commander, and moved from a shared house to his accommodation.

"After I became a commander's wife,

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