KENYA: Kenyan police have rescued 11 teenagers from a prison-like Islamic school where they say they were chained, tortured and indoctrinated with violent, anti-Christian teachings.
Armed officers raided the school in Eastleigh, a rundown Nairobi neighbourhood, last Monday.
Inside they found 10 boys from Kenya and Europe chained by their hands and feet and confined to a dark, foul-smelling room.
Guleed Ahmed, a 16-year-old from Britain, faked an illness to escape and raise the alarm. "It was really terrible," he said at a nearby police station yesterday. "They locked my hands and legs like this" - he clasped his ankles and wrists together - "all day, every day, even when I sleep. It lasted eight months."
Abdi Noor, a wiry 13-year-old from northern Kenya, nodded in agreement. "Even when we go to the toilet, we go jumping. They would only unlock us at the door," he said.
As police led the boys away from the school - known as the Khadija Islamic Institute of Discipline and Education - an angry crowd of Somali Muslims pelted them with stones, forcing officers to fire warning shots into the air.
However, senior Kenyan Muslim representatives expressed their abhorrence at the way the school was run, stressing it was an anomaly among thousands of well-run Islamic schools.
The head teacher, named by students as Mowlid Abdi Ahmed, has been arrested and is expected to be charged with cruelty. Guleed, whose family lives in Britain but who holds a Dutch passport, is being taking into charge by the Dutch embassy.
Relatives had sent the teenagers to the institute to learn about Islam. Schooling involved study of the Koran, with some lessons in English, Arabic and maths - the students say they took part in them with their arms bound in chains at all times.
Meals, they say, were spartan and usually accompanied by a hard thrashing.
"They cane you on the head, back, legs, ass, everywhere. How many times, it was impossible to know how many. They called it 'the medicine'," said Guleed. He had been attending Babington Community College in Leicester before his mother brought him to Nairobi last summer, he said. But when she called every month, teachers would stand over the phone.
"They told me 'if you say something bad, we will beat you up. You tell her you love the school and you're learning to be a good Muslim'." He finally escaped by faking a heart ailment and forcing teachers to bring him to a medical centre, where doctors alerted police.
Hashim Ali, 16, who lived in Stockholm for 12 years before an uncle enrolled him in Khadija last June, said the killing of Christians was glorified in the school.
"They told us it's called Jihad. They said if you enter a church with bombs and kill yourself, you will go to heaven." Sometimes al-Qaeda was mentioned during lectures, he said, but because they were in Arabic he did not understand the meaning.
He once tried to write a letter to the Swedish embassy. Scars on his chin, forehead and back testify to the beating he received after being discovered. "There is nothing wrong with Islam, it's just these people," he said yesterday.
Kenya has a long tradition of Muslim tolerance and yesterday senior religious figures expressed their abhorrence at the reports. "This is just as shocking for us Muslims as anyone else," said Mr Saad Khairallah of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims.
"Children and women are respected in Islam." A council official is investigating the circumstances in which the school operated, he said.
However, last November's Mombasa tourist bombings in which 18 people died have raised fears of a surge in extremism, influenced by hardliners in neighbouring Somalia. Three of the six principal attack suspects are Kenyan, and at least one is thought to have fled to Somalia.
Kenya's ability to defend against terrorist attacks has also been questioned. Yesterday, the New Zealand cricket team said it would refuse to play a game scheduled for February 21st in Nairobi unless the venue is changed.
"Our top priority must be the safety of our players," said Mr Martin Snedden, chief executive of the national team.