The military commander fighting jihadists in the northeast presented Hauwa Maltha and Esther Marcus before journalists in the regional capital Maiduguri on Thursday, where the duo have been kept since their rescue on April 21. Maltha and Marcus were 12 when they were abducted and later married off to Boko Haram fighters by the group’s late leader Abubakar Shekau. Both had borne children.
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Maltha, who was found with a three-year-old child and heavily pregnant, was married to three different fighters at different times, according to Major-General Ibrahim Ali. She was first married to Salman, a Shekau lieutenant who recorded propaganda videos, and later to another fighter after Salman was killed in fighting with troops in Lake Chad. Maltha’s second husband was also killed in fighting with troops in the group’s Sambisa forest enclave and the two children she had with him died from undisclosed sickness.
