ABUJA, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- A Nigerian court has sentenced an abductor of 276 Chibok schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria about four years ago to 15 years in prison on terrorism charges.
Haruna Yahaya, the 35-year-old member of the terror group Boko Haram, pleaded guilty to the charges against him on Monday.
The court arraigned him on a two-count charge of terrorism and abduction.
Yahaya, who had been in detention since 2015, is one of 1,000 alleged Boko Haram terrorists facing trial in the west African country.
Yahaya said he was conscripted into the terror group in 2014, the same night he took part in the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls on April 14 of that year.
Yahaya said that before his conscription into Boko Haram, he was a trader in Damboa, an area often attacked by the terror group in the northern state of Borno.
"I was threatened that I would be killed if I refused to join them," Yahaya told the court.
On the night of the Chibok schoolgirls' abduction, he said one of the girls begged him to help her escape but he could not because he feared for his own life, too.
He told his prosecutors that he later had a love affair with the same girl while she was in Boko Haram's captivity.
Four judges in a Federal High Court in the Nigerian state of Niger are sitting in the special courts established for the prosecution of 1,000 Boko Haram suspects currently held in a military cantonment in the state.
