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Rights group says 21 civilians killed at mosque, 41 children taken prisoner
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
NAIROBI, Kenya - Amnesty International accused Ethiopian soldiers on Wednesday of killing 21 people, including an imam and several Islamic scholars, at a Somali mosque and said seven of the victims had their throats slit.
The rights group said the soldiers had also captured dozens of children during the raid on the Al Hidaaya mosque in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, earlier this week during operations against Islamist insurgents.
Ethiopia has thousands of soldiers in neighboring Somalia to bolster a Western-backed government against rebels fighting an Iraq-style insurgency in the Horn of Africa nation.
The Ethiopian and Somali governments have not responded publicly to accusations of atrocities at the mosque. But they have frequently denied abusing human rights in the fight against groups they call al-Qaida-backed terrorists.
Moderate scholars die
Amnesty said those killed at the mosque included imam Sheik Saiid Yaha and several scholars of the moderate Tabligh group that operated there.
"Eyewitnesses report that those killed inside the mosque were unarmed civilians taking no active part in hostilities," Amnesty said. "Seven of the 21 were reported to have died after their throats were cut — a form of extra-judicial execution practiced by Ethiopian forces in Somalia."
Some moderate Islamist leaders have reacted to the mosque incident, and a recent upsurge of fighting in Mogadishu, by postponing plans to join U.N.-sponsored peace talks.
Dozens killed
More than 100 people have been killed since the weekend in clashes in the coastal capital, and the takeover of several small towns by the Islamists' militant al-Shabaab wing.
Washington last month put al-Shabaab on its terrorism list.
Amnesty urged the Ethiopian military to release all 41 children it said were held after the mosque raid.
"Witnesses have told Amnesty International that Ethiopian forces would only release the children from their military base in north Mogadishu 'once they had been investigated' and 'if they were not terrorists'," it said.
Some of the children — whose ages were as low as nine —were reported to have been freed, though the majority were still in custody, Amnesty's statement added.
Source: Reuters, April 23, 2008