(Washington Post) Eighty-two Chibok schoolgirls were released from Boko Haram insurgents on Saturday, according to Nigerian officials, a major development in the case of the Islamist group’s most famous victims, the teenagers whose kidnapping inspired the #BringBackOurGirls movement.
After months of negotiations, the girls were exchanged “for some Boko Haram suspects held by the authorities,” according to a government statement. They are expected to be sent to Nigeria’s capital on Sunday to meet the president.
In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from a secondary school in the town of Chibok. That mass abduction turned the insurgent group, operating mostly in the country’s northeast, into a household name across much of the world. Then-first lady Michelle Obama tweeted a picture of herself holding a placard with the #BringBackOurGirls appeal.
