Police in Zambia have arrested two foreigners for unlawful confinement and abuse of 280 boys being kept in cages at an Islamic “school” where they were taught Arabic and military tactics.
A team of police and Government officials, acting on a tip from some residents, rushed to the Faiz-E-Abrar Islamic Trust school in Lusaka’s Chaisa township and found the children, all males aged between four and 10, kept in cells.
The two arrested men are Boyd Kanyanta, a Congolese who is the vice-chairman at the school, and Iqbal Patel of Asian origin who is the chairman and director of the institution.
The children, clad in robes and Islamic caps told Youth, Sports and Child Development Minister Gladys Nyirongo, one of those who rushed to the school, that they wanted to leave the center where they were sometimes fed rotten food kept in a sewer. Nyirongo wondered why only Zambian children were found at the school where Islam was compulsory when every child had a right to choose a religion of one’s choice.
”We don’t want to have another al-Qaida network in Zambia. This appears to be a very serious arrangement,” Rev Nyirongo told the Zambia Times.
The children also said they were not allowed to speak any local language while in school. They complained they were subjected to Islamic teachings, caged in small rooms and made to eat food kept in a man-hole once they strayed from the Islamic teachings.
Four inmates were made to sleep on one single mattress in a crammed room of 12.
Police said the two school directors were charged with failing to provide necessities to children and child abuse.
Nyirongo said the children were fed expired foods while a lot of money was received from foreign donors for the operations of the institution. She said most of the children were malnourished.
”Some people are using these children to satisfy their own interest in or outside this country against the law of the country,” Nyirongo said.
A school aide, Mussa Muzombora, said he was sent to get young boys from Northern, Eastern and Luapula provinces so that they could be enrolled at the school.
Muzombora said the project was started in 2000 but he could not reveal the activities to the outsiders as he was scared of his superiors.
