Last month, the lions chased off her abductors and guarded her until police and relatives tracked her down in a remote corner of Ethiopia.
The men had held the girl for seven days, repeatedly beating her, before the lions chased them away and guarded her for half a day before her family and police found her, Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo said by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles west of the capital, Addis Ababa.
"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said.
The girl, the youngest of four brothers and sisters, was "shocked and terrified" and had to be treated for cuts from her beatings, Wondimu said. Police caught four of the men, but were still looking for three others.
In Ethiopia, kidnapping has long been part of the marriage custom, a tradition of sorrow and violence whose origins are murky. The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where the majority of the country's 71 million people live.
Ethiopia's lions, famous for their large black manes, are the country's national symbol and adorn statues and the local currency.
bron: http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/2005 ... SPECIALB09
Soms grijpt ze echt wel in
