Hauwa Mohammed Liman, the second aid worker held hostage by a faction of Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) for seven months has finally been executed after a deadline for negotiations with the Nigerian Government expired.

Confirming the development, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed described the killing as dastardly, inhuman and ungodly, saying nothing could justify the shedding of the blood of innocent people.

The Minister revealed that the Federal Government had kept all lines of communications with her abductors open, adding that it had always acted in the best interests of the hostages.

“It is very unfortunate that it has come to this. Before and after the deadline issued by her abductors, the Federal Government did everything any responsible government should do to save the aid worker,” Mohammed said.

He added that the Nigerian government would continue working to free the remaining hostages.

Liman was kidnapped alongside two International Red Cross Society (ICRC) aid workers by the Boko Haram faction in March this year during an attack on a military facility.

She was working in a hospital supported by ICRC in a displacement camp in the remote town of Rann outside Maiduguri in Borno State. One of them, 25-year-old Saifura Hussaini Khorsa was executed last month by the militants.

 

In a short statement, the Islamist sect, which has waged a decade-long war in the region said they executed Limn because she abandoned her religion to work for the Red Cross.

“We have kept our word exactly as we said, by killing another humanitarian worker, Hauwa Leman, who is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that were abducted during a raid on a military facility in Rann, Kala Balge in March 2018.

“Saifura and Hauwa were killed because they are considered as Murtads (apostates) by the group because they were once Muslims that have abandoned their Islam the moment they chose to work with the Red Cross, and for us, there is no difference between Red Cross and UNICEF.

“If we see them, we will kill the apostates among them, men or women, and choose to kill or keep the infidels as slaves, men or women,” the statement read.