Somali children abused in anti-insurgency crackdown, say families

MOGADISHU: Somali children suspected of links to insurgency are being held in adult jails where they are vulnerable to abuse, and tried in military courts, Somali families said, backing up allegations in a human rights report.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday Al Shabaab militants had forcibly recruited thousands of children — some as young as nine — and hundreds have been detained by Somali authorities.

The detentions violate a 2014 agreement by the government to treat child detainees separately and work with the United Nations to rehabilitate them, the HRW report said.

Government ministers for justice and human rights did not respond to requests for comment. The chairman of Somalia’s military courts, Liban Ali Yarow, said he did not speak to the media.

Clan elder Ugas Mohamed Wali, said his two nephews aged 12 and 13 were arrested on their way to school last year, along with 17 other teenagers. Both boys were jailed for eight years, he said.

“There are many problems in So- malia. Children are seized and arrested if accidentally they are passing near a blast scene,” he said, showing pictures of the two boys on his mobile phone.

“The 17 teenagers were released when they were brought to Mogadishu because they were from rich families. We had no money and so the two kids were taken into the underground cell where they were tortured.”

HRW cited UN figures saying Somali security forces arrested 386 children in 2016 during operations targeting Al Shabaab. Many were released after their parents paid bribes or clan elders intervened, but those whose families lacked money or influence were kept.

Authorities have handed over 250 children to the United Nations for rehabilitation since 2015, the report said, but that was often after months of pressure.

“In a justice system that remains heavily reliant on forced confessions, children are not spared,” the report said, adding that children were “threatened and on occasion beaten, at times in ways that amount to torture”.