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Nigeria Seeks to Trade Captured Militants for More Kidnapped Schoolgirls

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DAKAR, Senegal — Only days after securing the release of dozens of schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the Nigerian government is going back to the negotiating table, using captured militant commanders as bargaining chips to free the rest of the abducted girls.

Talks to release the girls, who were taken three years ago in a mass kidnapping that drew the world’s attention to Nigeria’s battle with Islamist militants, are likely to begin this week, according to Shehu Sani, a Nigerian senator who has been involved in the negotiations.

The girls were preparing for exams in April 2014 when Boko Haram fighters stormed their boarding school, loading nearly 300 of them in trucks and carting them off into the forest. A few dozen quickly escaped, and more than two years passed before others were released.

Yet the government found leverage, Mr. Sani said: Boko Haram wanted its commanders back.

Eighteen of the group’s founding members had been captured more than a year ago and were being held in government custody.

DAKAR, Senegal — Only days after securing the release of dozens of schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the Nigerian government is going back to the negotiating table, using captured militant commanders as bargaining chips to free the rest of the abducted girls.

Talks to release the girls, who were taken three years ago in a mass kidnapping that drew the world’s attention to Nigeria’s battle with Islamist militants, are likely to begin this week, according to Shehu Sani, a Nigerian senator who has been involved in the negotiations.

The girls were preparing for exams in April 2014 when Boko Haram fighters stormed their boarding school, loading nearly 300 of them in trucks and carting them off into the forest. A few dozen quickly escaped, and more than two years passed before others were released.

Yet the government found leverage, Mr. Sani said: Boko Haram wanted its commanders back.

Eighteen of the group’s founding members had been captured more than a year ago and were being held in government custody.

A deal was struck. Over the weekend, Boko Haram handed the Nigerian government one of its biggest victories in years, turning over 82 of the kidnapped girls.

In exchange, the government released five of Boko Haram’s top commanders, a morale boost for fighters who have suffered severe losses in recent months.

Now, Boko Haram wants the rest of its leaders, Mr. Sani said, opening a window to get many, if not all, of the 113 girls still missing from the kidnapping at the school. It is unclear how many of them are alive.

“Swapping was considered a lesser evil than giving them a lot of money,” Mr. Sani said, referring to the exchange of Boko Haram commanders for the girls. “I had to convince the government if Americans can swap Guantánamo prisoners with the Taliban, and if Israel can swap with Hamas, we must swap.”

Boko Haram first released 21 girls in October, and then the 82 girls on Sunday morning. They were soon flown to Abuja, the capital, and remain under tight control by the Nigerian government.

On Tuesday, the latest group of girls to be freed was debriefed by security officials. Their parents still had not seen them, three days after their release. Advocates urged the government to allow the girls to meet with their families immediately.

Instead, the girls met with a handful of government officials and leaders from a group that had pushed for their release.

“They told us that they’d never thought they would be freed,” said Lawan Zanna, secretary of the Abducted Chibok Girls Parents Movement for Rescue, who was at the meeting.

Mr. Zanna’s daughter was also kidnapped from the school at Chibok but was not among those rescued.

“Seeing these freed ones makes me keep hoping that mine would soon be rescued, too,” he said.

Mr. Zanna said the girls had told him that the other missing students were alive but some were ill. The 82 freed girls seemed to be in good health, he said. In photos released over the weekend, they did not appear gaunt or sickly. One had a broken hand and another a fractured leg.

“They are in much better shape than the first batch of 21 girls” released in October, said Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno state, where Boko Haram is most active. He said the girls would be allowed to visit with their families, but they are not free to go home, at least not immediately.

The 21 girls released last year remain in the custody of the government, which has promised to send them to school. Some were flown home to see their parents last Christmas, but they were not allowed to spend even one night in their homes, much to the frustration of their parents, who saw them for only a short time.

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The girls released last fall said that some of their kidnapped classmates had died in childbirth or been killed in military raids. The 82 girls recently released told officials that they did not leave behind any children.

Boko Haram members claimed during negotiations that the group’s fighters had treated the girls more humanely than the government treats the more than two million people displaced by the war, some of whom live in squalid camps where food is scarce and sanitation is lacking. Others scrape by in abandoned buildings.

“They told negotiators the world will see how well fed the girls are,” said Mr. Sani, the chairman of a Senate committee on the humanitarian crisis in Nigeria’s northeast, where Boko Haram has raged.

Mr. Sani said negotiations began three years ago, when he contacted the family lawyer for Mohammed Yusuf, Boko Haram’s founder. Mr. Yusuf was killed in police custody in 2009, enraging the group’s adherents.

The lawyer helped set up talks, and Mr. Sani said he decided to include outsiders to monitor the process so that both sides would feel comfortable. He said he contacted the European Union, which declined to have a role. The government of Switzerland agreed, and he also involved the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has said it merely transported the hostages.

At the time talks began, they were focused on how to end the war with Boko Haram, which was then at its zenith. The group was holding huge swaths of territory, and negotiations stalled while the government focused on the battle.

Then the military made advances, particularly in the months after a new president, Muhammadu Buhari, took office at the end of May 2015.

Part of the military’s battlefield victories included the capture of 18 members of Boko Haram’s Shura council of leaders, Mr. Sani said. Each member of the 30-person council was in charge of a cell of fighters. The captured commanders were taken to Abuja, where they were held in a secret secured facility.

Through the ensuing months, talks started and broke down repeatedly, in part because the military was reluctant to give up any commanders and offer Boko Haram a strategic edge, Mr. Sani said. Only after it became clear that Boko Haram was scattered did government officials start to consider a swap.

“The government was confident that even if they were released, it couldn’t change the balance on the battlefield,” Mr. Sani said. “We were negotiating from a point of strength.”

In October, Boko Haram agreed to release 21 of the girls from Chibok as a show of faith, without an exchange of any commanders, Mr. Sani said. He declined to say whether the government had paid a ransom for those girls.

“I prefer to say there was a deal,” he said.

Talks continued until late last week, when Boko Haram handed over a list of 82 names of the girls it planned to free and government negotiators handed over the names of five commanders.

Mr. Sani would not say whether money had changed hands for this group either, again referring to “a deal.”

Mr. Sani said he expected another exchange would soon free more, if not all, of the remaining girls.

On Tuesday, the president’s spokesman told local news media that 83 girls were supposed to have been freed, but one decided to stay. Mr. Sani said there were others like her.

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