ICC note: Children are vulnerable victims of Islamic terrorist groups like Boko Haram. Boys between the ages of 5-17 are usually kidnapped and forced to learn the Quran to later carry on with the jihad. Boko Haram has boot camps designated to train these boys where they learn to handle assault rifles with the purpose of becoming violent fighters, spies and suicide bombers. These same children are usually beaten as part of their training and numbed by drugs to be sent into battle where they end up dying of thirst and starvation. Boko Haram tries to intimidate civilians by kidnapping children like they did with the Chibok girls in 2014, who came from a Christian village. Christians and other non-Muslim victims are always forced to convert to Islam or they are tortured and end up being killed by Islamic fighters.

8/29/2016, Nigeria (ASSIST News) – The world was horrified when the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in 2014. But less coverage has been given to the kidnapping of more than 10,000 boys over the last three years by the terror group and their brutal coercion tactics, forcing children to wage jihad.

The allegations are contained in a stunning investigative report by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Shortly after the Chibok schoolgirls were seized, Boko Haram attacked six villages in the nearby mountains and rounded up children there, with little media coverage beyond the Nigerian press.

A few months later, the group captured the town of Damasak, and took 300 students, mostly boys, age 7 to 17. The militants imprisoned them in a school, witnesses told the WSJ. Their parents were held in separate rooms. For months, the children were forced to learn the Quran.

…