Jamal Noor, 15, and his brother went to Somaliland to visit their grandmother. Both are now sitting in a Somaliland jail after being quickly convicted, along with 19 other men, in a gang rape. Their father says the boys had neither a parent nor a lawyer to help them after their arrest and don’t speak the local language.
Jamal Noor would have been in class at Father Michael Goetz Secondary School in Mississauga last week. He would have spent his afternoons playing soccer with his friends and his nights studying for tests.
Instead Jamal, 15, spent another week in an overcrowded Somaliland jail, having been sentenced, along with his brother Liiban and 19 other men, for the gang-rape of two women.
A Somaliland court sentenced 20 of the men — including Jamal and Liiban — to 10 years in prison in early August. One man received a five-year sentence.
Hodan Mohamed Ali, of Somaliland’s National Human Rights Commission, a government-run agency, said all of the accused pleaded guilty and “accepted the case” after an investigation.
But Mohamed Noor, said he doesn’t understand how the alleged crime was investigated, tried and sentenced in a single week.
“There was no parents. There was no lawyer. There was nobody,” Noor said of the sentencing.
The brothers, who the family said do not speak Somali, have now spent more than two months behind bars in the tiny East African territory.
“I don’t even know how to describe it,” Jamal told the Star. “These people here, they don’t understand us. We can’t talk to anybody. It’s so unfair.”
After his arrest, he said police officers tried to question him in Somali.
“I didn’t understand what they were saying. And I was like, ‘English?’ And one of the officers slapped me, and I think he said, ‘Speak in our language.’”
Conditions at the jail are awful, Jamal said.
“We sleep on the floor. We can’t take showers every day … It’s hard to live here.”
Jamal said he and his brother are stuffed into a cell with eight other men, and can’t communicate with any of them because of the language barrier.
“I don’t understand if they’re trying to be nice to me or be mean to me, but most of the time it’s being mean.”
Mohamed Noor and his wife, who flew from their Mississauga home to Somaliland to help their sons, drop off food and fresh water at the jail every day. But Noor said he’s not sure if they always get what’s delivered. Noor said Liiban is sick now. He thinks it’s because he drank some dirty water at the jail.
Jamal also alleges he and his brother have been beaten and tortured while in custody.
Allegations of torture should be taken very seriously, said Sukanya Pillay, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s national security program. The group is not currently working with the Noor family because they have not been asked for help.
The Canadian government has a responsibility to make sure citizens detained abroad are safe, she said.
“We understand there are many sensitivities, but in our view, there is a clear responsibility to seek out the circumstances and press for the protection of international human rights law in respect to any Canadian held abroad,” Pillay said.
“The bottom line is that we want to make sure that every possible protection available to these two boys in international law is afforded to them.”
Canada’s foreign affairs department is “aware of the arrest and detention of two Canadian citizens in the territory of Somaliland,” a spokesperson for the department said in an email. The Canadian Embassy in Nairobi is providing consular services to the family. The department declined to release any other details of the case, citing privacy concerns.
Noor said Canadian officials have yet to visit his sons, and updates from the consular office have been few and far between.
Meanwhile, Noor has hired a lawyer to appeal their conviction, but said a date has not been set.
Paying the victims’ families could help get his sons out more quickly, Noor said.
“Basically we make an agreement with the family and they say, ‘We have nothing against these people,’” he said.
Such settlements are the traditional penalty for rape, non-governmental organizations in the region have reported.
Noor, a truck driver in Mississauga, said he isn’t sure if he’ll be able to pay.
“It’s going to be a lot of money. I don’t know if I can afford that.”
But he’s vowed to do whatever it takes to free his sons.
Back in Canada, friends are also doing what they can for the Noor brothers. A Facebook group has been created and an online petition is circulating. Friends have also been tweeting about Jamal and Liiban using the hashtag #justiceforthenoorbrothers, and a rally is in the works.
Help can’t come soon enough for Jamal.
“I’ve been locked up for two months. And I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here,” he said. “From a country that you’re not from? It’s hard.”
