Why 13-year-old Given By Father To Boko Haram Refuses To Blast Her Bomb Belt

Zahara'u Adam is just 13. Yet, in a market in Nigeria, her father handed her over to the Boko Haram, who forced her to wear a bomb belt so that she could undertake a suicide bombing mission.

However, Zahara'u refused to explode the bomb, according to sky.news.com. With a threat to bury her alive, she was strapped with the belt, and then taken to the market in Kano, Nigeria's second largest city in the northern region.

She recalled that her father took three girls to the bush that was surrounded by gunmen. He asked her if she wanted to go to heaven. To do so, she had to complete the suicide mission. If she tried to run she would be killed, they threatened, according to metro.

Interestingly two of her friends detonated the bombs strapped on them. But she watched the horror and saw that four persons had died due to the blast on December 10. She then said that she felt too scared to do it.

As she too got injured, she was taken to the hospital, but got arrested by the police even as she got treatment. Handed over to scribes by the cops, she was asked to narrate how the terrorists forced her to walk out with the bomb belt. The police hoped that public awareness would rise.

"My father took us to the bush which was surrounded by gunmen, I was asked if I want to go to heaven, when I answered, they said I have to go for a suicide mission and if I attempt to run, they will kill me," she recalled. From there she said that they were sent to Kano market. The others suggested that they part ways, but Zahara'u could not do it. "After my friend detonated her own I was wounded," she said.

Unfortunately, no one could verify whether what she said was true. She did not even have a lawyer.

Boko Haram is infamous for using female suicide bombers. For five years, it has been struggling to set up an Islamist state in the northeast of Nigeria.