Five sisters who were abducted and held captive in the capital of Nigeria have reportedly been released by Nigerian police. The girls were released during a combined police-army operation in a forest in northern Nigeria on Saturday night.
They were taken from their Abuja home earlier this month, along with another sister, who was later killed. Despite the kidnappers’ demands for a ransom, the statement made no mention of it.
After the operation near the Kajuru forest in Kaduna State on Saturday at approximately 23:30 local time (22:30 GMT), Nigerian police announced that the girls were reunited with their families.
The six sisters, whose ages ranged from early adolescence to 23 years old, and their father, Mansoor Al-Kadriyar, were abducted from their home in the Abuja suburb of Bwari on January 2. Witnesses claim that as the aunt of the girls ran for help, he and three police officers were killed in an ambush.
Nabeeha, 21, Mansoor’s daughter and a final-year university student, was allegedly killed as a warning after the kidnappers freed him on the condition that he pay a substantial ransom, according to a family member who spoke to the BBC under the condition of anonymity.
Hundreds of people have been kidnapped in Nigeria in recent years, primarily by criminal groups who see it as a quick and simple way to make money. There have been particularly bad storms in the northwest of the country.
The case of the Al-Kadriyar sisters infuriated many people in the country, who said that the government had not lived up to its promises to put an end to the kidnapping crisis.
To end the kidnapping and security crisis, First Lady Remi Tinubu urged security agencies to “intensify their efforts” and demanded the “swift return of the Al-Kadriyar sisters.”.
Many Nigerians donated to a crowdfunding campaign because the girls’ return was demanded at 65 million naira (US$68,000; £53,000).
