{Of at least 25 child refugees being held, Youssef Aden has served far longer than the average detention period.}<\/p>\n
Campaigners have called on Egypt to immediately release a 17-year-old Somali refugee, who has been detained for nearly six months.<\/p>\n
Youssef Mohamed Aden was arrested in Egypt on July 6, 2015. A member of a small minority clan, he had fled home after his brother was killed by al-Shabab, an armed group linked to al-Qaeda. <\/p>\n
The UN agency for children (UNICEF) has documented at least 25 children among the 50 total documented refugees currently detained in Egypt. <\/p>\n
“There is a noticeable decrease in the number of children in detention this time of the year,” Ahmad Hafez, a child protection consultant at UNICEF, told Al Jazeera, adding that the total number “reaches to more than 160 children in detention” during summer months. <\/p>\n
“Most of these minors are usually unaccompanied, coming from the Horn of Africa, while Syrian children are usually with parents.”<\/p>\n
The average detention time for a child is between two weeks and a month, Hafez said. <\/p>\n
Aden, however, has been held for nearly six months.<\/p>\n
After being picked up by Egyptian police, he was placed in the Karmooz detention centre in Alexandria, according to a new report by the Sweden-based Centre for Refugee Solidarity. <\/p>\n
With no passport or identification documents to prove his nationality, Egyptian authorities have been unable to deport him. <\/p>\n
Since his arrest, Aden has been subjected to several punitive measures, including having his cell phone confiscated, being threatened with deportation and not provided with legal counsel. <\/p>\n
“He was seemingly punished for sending pictures of the conditions inside the jail cells and exposing the situation and the deliberate neglect of the Egyptian police,” Alia al-Ghussain, a senior researcher and advocate at the Centre for Refugee Solidarity, told Al Jazeera. <\/p>\n
Ghussain explained that Aden has been detained in the same cells as adults, a “widespread” practice that contravenes both international and Egyptian laws. <\/p>\n
Egypt is host to an estimated 127,000 Syrian refugees, as well as some 50,000 African and Iraqi refugees, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). <\/p>\n
Many refugees smuggled through Egypt are fleeing political violence in Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia, among other countries – risking their lives to make the perilous journey to seek asylum in Europe or Israel.<\/p>\n
Some have been shot, sometimes fatally, by security forces, while others have been tortured by Egyptian and Sudanese human traffickers, according to Human Rights Watch. <\/p>\n
Ghussain said that “there has been a recent escalation against African refugees in terms of imprisonment, as well as shooting people on the borders”. <\/p>\n
Back in November, Egyptian police were accused of shooting dead 15 Sudanese refugees in the Sinai region as they attempted to enter Israel. <\/p>\n
“The police don’t have the capacity, training or knowledge to deal with refugees, and therefore they often don’t know how to de-escalate the situation,” Ghussain said.<\/p>\n
Muhammad al-Kashef of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights visited Aden twice in Karmooz and spoke to him regularly through phone calls, text messages and Whatsapp before his phone was confiscated. <\/p>\n
However, he could not reach him since he was transferred to another detention centre in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on December 3. “We have tried to visit him since then, but [the authorities] have denied us,” Kashef told Al Jazeera. <\/p>\n
Kashef explained that while the conditions of Aden’s detention are common for detained refugees, his case is a difficult one.<\/p>\n
“He can’t prove his name or nationality because he doesn’t have a passport, any documents, a personal statement and isn’t registered with the UNHCR,” he said. <\/p>\n
“He lived in a very poor community in the desert [in Somalia], and he his name was never registered with authorities,” he said, adding that Aden has not been able to speak to his family since he was detained. <\/p>\n
Egypt’s Ministry of Interior was not available for comment at the time of publication. <\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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