Monday, December 27, 2010

Syria arrests, tortures, deports Somali immigrants

Syrian security forces on the border with Turkey arrested, tortured and threatened deportation to at least 11 Somali immigrants who escaped from the violence in their country, police sources said.

The war weary fleeing Somalis have considered Syria as safe sanctuary and human rights’ minder, but instead they are jailed, beaten and deported back to the ‘hell’ in Somalia.

Four of the immigrants who are women have escaped from Somalia after Somalia’s extremist group of Alshabaab have tried to get them forcibly married to foreign terrorists in their ranks.

" The 11 Somalis are in our jails and they were arrested on their to Turkey from Syria two weeks ago" A Syrian police official who asked not to be named says.

" Our commanders have ordered to punish them for the reason of entering Syria and deport them after a week" he added.

According to the police, the immigrants will be deported back to the world’s most dangerous country, Somalia where they have left for security reasons and poverty.

Last week, human rights watch has angrily ordered Saudi Arabia to stop deporting Somalis fleeing their violence ridden country after Saudi authorities returned at least 150 Somali nationals, many of them children, from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on December 17, 2010, press reports said. Saudi Arabia had deported an estimated 2,000 Somalis to Mogadishu in June and July, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

No comments could be reached from the human rights’ groups on the matter.

Somalis in their country are subject to abuses by Somalia’s extremist group Alshabaab. Since last year, Alshabaab have executed more than 40 people after an ad-hoc courts’ verdicts without evidence of the alleged crimes.

Al-Shabab, which vows allegiance to al-Qaida and whose members include foreign fighters, controls large parts of southern Somalia and much of the capital, Mogadishu.

Somalia has not had an effective central government for 19 years. The U.N.-backed government controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu, while its allies control much of central Somalia.

Shuaib Gemal, is a freelance journalist based in Damascus, Syria. He writes for different int't and local media. He can be reached at: Syrian.news@hotmail.com

Source: Suna Time.

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