Al-Shabab executes two girl 'spies'

Link

Al-Shabab executes two girl 'spies'

Al-Shabab warn that dozens of people suspected of spying 'face the same fate' as the two executed girls

Somali armed group publicly execute by firing squad two teenage girls accused of spying "for the enemy".

Al-Shabab fighters have publicly executed two teenage girls in the central Somali town of Beledweyne on charges of spying, witnesses have said.

Hundreds of people watched as a firing squad arranged by the armed group shot the pair on Wednesday, in the first known instance of such an execution of women accused of spying.

"These women were spying for the enemy and were arrested by mujahideen [holy warriors]" last week, Sheikh Yusuf Ali Ugas, al-Shabab's regional commander, told the crowd after the execution.

"After a long investigation, they confessed to their crimes," he said, adding that dozens of other people were held at Beledweyne police station on the same charges and faced the same fate.

"Anyone found to be involved in such crimes will meet the same fate and will be executed," the al-Shabab leader said.

'Shocking'

Beledweyne, a town which lies near the Ethiopian border, witnessed heavy fighting between the rebel group and pro-government forces earlier this month.

Ali, a resident of the town, said: "The group informed the population that a punishment was going to be carried out in public on two women they claimed had been found guilty of spying.

"I didn't know they were planning to shoot them. The two girls were sitting on the ground with their hands tied behind their back.

"Then a group of fighters covered their faces and shot them from behind.

"It was shocking, the girls were so young. They looked so desperate but nobody could help them."

Elders and residents gave conflicting information on the girls' ages but both of them were believed to be 17 or 18.

"Everyone was very sorry for the young girls who were killed in front of hundreds," Maryam Ahmed, another witness, said. "I couldn't hold back my tears."

"I'm worried for the dozens of other people who are currently in jail on similar allegations," she said.

Al-Shabab, listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, executed two men on spying charges outside Mogadishu earlier this month.

Condemnation

Abdirahman Omar Osman, the central government's information minister, issued a statement condemning the execution of the girls.

"This execution is yet another human rights abuse committed by the criminals. This act of killing innocent children does not have Islamic and humanitarian justifications," the statement said.

In a case that grabbed the world's attention two years to the day before Wednesday's execution, a group of men stoned a woman to death in the southern al-Shabab bastion of Kismayo after an Islamic court found her guilty of adultery.

Al-Shabab have in recent years repeatedly executed men accused of spying or murder and chopped off the hands of thieves.

The group - formerly the youth wing of the Islamic Courts Union, of which Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the current Somali president, was a top political leader - controls three-quarters of Somalia.

It has been fighting to topple Somalia's government and the African Union force that protects the administration.

Somalia has had no effective government for 19 years and Western nations and neighbours say the country is used as a shelter by fighters planning attacks in East Africa and further afield.

Child Soldier for Al Qaeda Is Sentenced for War Crimes

Link

Child Soldier for Al Qaeda Is Sentenced for War Crimes

WASHINGTON — A United States military commission at Guantánamo Bay has sentenced a former child soldier for Al Qaeda to 40 years in prison for war crimes — but he might be released in less than three years, the Defense Department said.

A panel of seven military officers at the American military base in Cuba determined on Sunday that the child soldier, Omar Khadr, 24, should be imprisoned — for terrorism-related offenses he committed in Afghanistan when he was a teenager — until he nearly reaches retirement age.

But that sentence was theoretical. Under the terms of a plea agreement, Mr. Khadr will serve no more than eight years. Moreover, after one year, Mr. Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is likely to be transferred to a prison in Canada, where he would be eligible to apply for parole after serving two years and eight months.

“Were Khadr to be transferred, the terms of his incarceration would be subject to existing Canadian laws pertaining to custody and conditional release,” the Defense Department said in a statement, adding that the United States understood that Mr. Khadr “would be eligible to apply for parole after serving one-third of his sentence.”

Exactly how Mr. Khadr’s case will be handled by the Canadian parole system is unclear.

In murder cases, the Parole Board of Canada normally credits preconviction time served in custody to calculate when prisoners can apply for parole. Because Mr. Khadr was arrested just over eight years ago, he could be eligible as soon as he enters Canada.

But murder convictions in Canada carry a mandatory life sentence, which may enable the parole board to alter its normal practice, said David M. Paciocco, a law professor at the University of Ottawa. And because Mr. Khadr was 15 at the time of his arrest, special provisions of Canada’s prisoner-transfer laws related to murder convictions may apply, said Allan Manson, a professor of law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Even if Mr. Khadr is turned down on his first application, Professor Manson said, he is almost certain to be released after serving two-thirds of his sentence.

Mr. Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 after a firefight with American troops.

During that battle, an American sergeant, Christopher Speer, was killed by a grenade that Mr. Khadr was accused of throwing. A videotape found after the firefight was said to show Mr. Khadr making and planting roadside bombs.

Last week, Mr. Khadr, who was born in Toronto and comes from a Qaeda-linked family, pleaded guilty to all five charges against him, including murder in violation of the laws of war, spying and providing support to terrorism.

After his plea, a jury of seven military officers — who had not been told how long his maximum imprisonment would be under the plea agreement — spent several days hearing testimony about how to sentence him. Under tribunal rules, he would serve either the sentence imposed by the panel or the maximum time laid out in the plea agreement, whichever was shorter.

Prosecutors called Tabitha Speer, the widow of the Army sergeant killed by the grenade, who read letters from their children about their sadness at losing their father. The children were 3 and 9 months when their father died.

The defense, which argued for leniency because of Mr. Khadr’s youth, submitted evidence that he would probably attend a college in Edmonton, Alberta, after his release. Mr. Khadr also acknowledged responsibility for his acts and apologized to Ms. Speer.

Although prosecutors asked for a sentence of 25 years, the panel decided instead on a 40-year term. After the official sentence was announced, the judge disclosed Mr. Khadr’s eight-year plea agreement.

The judge also released the text of diplomatic notes exchanged by the United States and Canada over Mr. Khadr’s eligibility for eventual transfer.

In them, the United States said it would support his application to transfer after a year, and the Canadian government said it was “inclined to favorably consider Mr. Khadr’s application to be transferred to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence.”

Both governments expressed doubt about whether the parole board in Canada — an independent agency— would release Mr. Khadr early, emphasizing “that eligibility for parole does not mean that the release will be granted.”

Rising use of Somali child soldiers

Link

Rising use of Somali child soldiers

Anti-government fighters using children in their war against government in Mogadishu.

The use of child soldiers in Somalia is on the rise as fighting in the country continues to worsen.

While international pressure has forced the interim government to abandon the use of child soldiers, the challenge is to stop the anti-government fighters from exploiting them. 

Mohammed Adow reports.

Child Soldiers of The Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

Link

Child Soldiers of The Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

According to an April 2000 estimate, there are some 2,000 children in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) ranks. This is not unique to LTTE or Sri Lanka but is a global phenomenon. The number of child soldiers, some as young as seven years, participating in the various armed conflicts around the world is estimated to be about 300,000.

Battlefields with Child Combatants

Afghanistan	Albania	Algeria	Angola
Bangladesh	Burma (Myanmar)	Burundi	Cambodia
Colombia	Congo-Brazzaville	Congo-Kinshasa (former Zaire)	Eritrea
Ethiopia	Ex-Yugoslavia	Indonesia/East Timor	India/Kashmir
Iraq/Kurdistan	Iran	Israel/Occupied Territories	Lebanon
Liberia	Mexico	Pakistan	Papua New Guinea
Peru	Philippines	Russia/Chechnya	Rwanda
Sierra Leone	Somalia	Sri Lanka	Sudan
Tajikistan	Turkey/Kurdistan	Uganda

Participation in armed conflicts, even voluntarily, by children below the age of 15 is an offence, according to the Geneva Convention, 1948, and the two amendments to it, adopted in 1997, as well as Article 38 of the UN Convention on Rights of the Child. In the decade ending 1999, nearly two million child soldiers were killed in the various conflicts, worldwide.

Children are recruited at a time when there is a significant reduction in the numbers of available adults. Besides, analysts point that advances in technology have facilitated the recruitment of children. Weapons, now in vogue in armed conflicts, are light and automatic, and hence, easy for children to handle. Also, children are less likely to disobey orders and can easily be prodded to undertake daring assignments, many a time ending up in death.

Children join armed conflicts for different reasons. While some sign up voluntarily others are recruited by force. Those joining voluntarily do so on account of the poor economic condition of their family, or because they wish to avenge the suffering or death of a member of the family at the hands of 'the enemy', or simply because of the thrill it gives. Indoctrination through lectures at schools, screening of films, commemorative events such as Heroes Day plays a significant role in attracting children into the LTTE’s fold. Several accounts of from Sri Lanka support the above reasons.

Serious recruitment of children (and women) into the LTTE began after the LTTE decided to take on the Indian Peace Keeping Force, which was sent to the Island nation in 1987 as part of an agreement, between Sri Lanka and India, that sought to resolve the ethnic conflict in the former.

Even earlier, children formed a part of the Tiger cadres. Child soldiers were originally recruited into the LTTE’s baby brigade, commandeered by Justin. But, after 1987, they were integrated with adult units. Initially recruited from refugee children in India, they were reportedly sent to a training camp in the southern Indian port town of Pondicherry. Supervised by one Basheer Kaka of Trincomalee, the training then was non-military and essentially concerned with physical exercises and education.

Child cadres in the LTTE perform various duties. At one end, they are employed in the kitchen and in medical camps and are asked to do menial jobs. Also, they are posted in the supplies division where they distribute arms and ammunition to other cadres. Above these, they are assigned to gather intelligence and fight alongside adult cadres. Reports indicate that they also functioned as the bodyguards of Pottuamman, the LTTE’s chief of intelligence.

Normally, a training programme runs through four months. At times, owing to the exigency of immediate requirement on the battlefield, the programme was cut short by three months. The cadres, children, begin their day early. They are required to fall in at 5.00am. Thereafter, they go through physical training followed by training in battle and field craft and parade drill. Further into the day, child combatants read LTTE literature. Some more physical training and instruction on communications, explosives and intelligence gathering follow.

Induction onto the field commences with attacking less defended targets. For instance, they are sent to attack villages that do not have any significant armed cover. On the battlefield, the child combatants fought and died much like the adult soldiers. They participated, and still do, in daring attacks to capture weapons as well as territory.

The LTTE’s child soldiers saw their first recorded major action on November 22, 1990. In this attack on the Mankulam army camp, nearly a third of the Sri Lankan troops were killed and the camp was vacated by troops after two days of clashes. Their second major action was the attack on the strategic Elephant Pass Military Complex less than a year later, on July 10, 1991. The Tigers suffered heavy casualties in this attack. An estimated 550 LTTE cadres, including children, were killed in these clashes. Learning from its failures during the July 1991 operations, the LTTE changed the composition of its attacking groups. It put the child cadres together with elite Black Tigers cadres and scored astonishing results, one in 1993 and another in 1996––two army/navy complexes were overrun and an estimated US $ 100 million-worth arms and ammunition were seized by the Tigers. In the 1996 amphibious attack on the military complex in Mullaithivu, child soldiers shot dead some 300 troops after they were disarmed.

The fiercest of all LTTE-fighting units, analysts have noted, is the Leopard Brigade, or Siruthai Puli. It consists exclusively of children whose unswerving loyalty to Tiger chief Prabhakaran and their commitment have attracted considerable attention. Among their actions is the gunning down of 200 elite government troops on December 4, 1997, in Kanakarankulam, Wanni.

The child combatants themselves have suffered numerous casualties in various clashes. In October 1995, in the attack on the Weli Oliya military complex, regarded by analysts as the worst-ever set back to the child fighters, some 3,000 cadres, a vast majority of them children and women, were killed by government troops. Official sources disclosed that in one battle alone, in September/October, 1998, at Kilinochchi, over 500 child soldiers might have been killed. Around the same time, in all, an estimated 1,700 LTTE cadres had died in battles at Kilinochchi, Paranthan and Mankulam. The killed child combatants, along with several women fighters, constituted the frontlines in those battles. Soon after, the LTTE reportedly stepped up its recruitment drive among children in the eastern Batticaloa district to make up for lost cadres.

26 LTTE child soldiers, including four girls who surrendered to the armed forces at Mankulam, in early October 1998, disclosed that the LTTE kidnapped and recruited them into is fighting forces. Some of them were picked up from their homes while some others were hustled into a waiting vehicle.

The surrender of these child soldiers was accorded international publicity. Soon thereafter, at a meeting held in New York between Prof. G. L. Peiris, Sri Lanka’s Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, and Olara Otunnu, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Rapporteur for Children and Armed Conflict, Otunnu expressed his disappointment at the LTTE’s breach of pledge. The LTTE had earlier promised him that it would not recruit children under 17 years of age and would not deploy them before they attained 18 years of age.

Despite its assurances, the LTTE, reports indicate, has not given up on recruiting child combatants. A February 2000 report warned that the LTTE would be targeting children in the Wanni, where it was reportedly organising a vigorous recruitment drive. The report, citing the logic of numbers, said that the LTTE, in order to, make up 10,000 lost cadres, between 1995 and 1999, would have to target some 30 per cent of the school-going children who have come of age.