UNMIL Officer Rapes Two Children

November 29, 2005
AllAfrica.Com
Original Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200511291103.html http://allafrica.com/stories/200511291103.html

November 29, 2005 (AllAfrica.com) The crime of Rape has become endemic in the Liberian society to the extent that nearly everyday a female child falls prey to the nefarious desire of certain unscrupulous men who have the tendency of satisfying their sexual desire to the detriment of children including babies in some instances.  It would seem that due to the snail pace attitude adopted by the security forces and judicial workers in bringing rapists to book, continues to impart negatively on the society as the commission of rape is common place now a days with even foreigners joining the bandwagon to inflict wounds on little girls.

The latest of such inhumane act against Liberian kids was allegedly done by a lance corporal of the Nigerian Contingent of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) Rashidi Ibrahim. Corporal Ibrahim allegedly raped two kids opposite the Monrovia City Hall in Sinkor.

The Nigerian UNMIL Officer who was assigned at the NIBATT 7 checkpoint in front of the former Toyota Garage is held in confinement by his superior officers on suspicion of raping two kids, one nine years and the other five years old. The kids are residing within the same vicinity with the suspect. According to the nine-year-old victim, the officer allegedly invited her in his bedroom last Thursday, November 24, 2005 stuffed a cloth in her mouth and threatened that if she raised alarm he would shoot her dead and began having an affairs with her.

Following the first incident, the child told her friends about the incident in agony as she was experiencing severe pains, but was afraid to disclose the information to her parents.

When I was playing with my friends in the yard, the UNMIL man, (Rashidi) who usually asked us to wash his dishes, came to me the next day. He asked whether I was still feeling pain and I told him yes. Then, he told me to call my small sister which I did, the nine years old victim explained. When the mother of the nine-year-old victim was asked as to how she got the news that her daughter was raped, she indicated My daughter told her friends in the yard because I was not home at the time.

The mother later took her daughter at the Women and Children Protection Unit of the Liberian National Police to report the matter. The Police advised her to take the child to the Benson MSF clinic in Paynesville for medical examination.  The nine-year-old child was being assisted by her parents to walk as she could hardly sit on her buttocks due to the severity of the pain from her rectum.  Walking like a handicap, the girl cried of pain from her stomach, anus and back leaving her parents to weep as they waited for a taxi to take them to the Benson Clinic.
While reporters were gathering information about the nine-year-old victim, the five-year-kid was seen on the back of her mother towards an UNMIL Police vehicle to be taken to the Benson Hospital. The five years old kid was weeping bitterly as she and her mother were whisked off to the Benson Hospital by a team of Liberian Police Officers.

By-standers who rushed on the scene to see the officer, who allegedly committed the act, chanted UNMIL rape, UNMIL rape?  you came to keep peace or to rape our children.

The officer Rashidi was seen with a rope tied around his hands and pushed into an UNMIL vehicle for an unknown location.  The crime of rape under the Liberia law is a first-degree felony, which is bailable and punishable by four years imprisonment.  However, the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia in collaboration with other human rights organizations have embarked on a campaign to ensure that rape is punishable by death or life imprisonment.

The female lawyers have drafted a bill to that effect and submitted it to the National Transitional Legislative Assembly (NTLA) since July this year, but the NTLA is yet to pass the bill into law.  The August Body wants sticky issues contained in the Act to be removed before it can be enacted.  Those issues include death penalty for gang rapists, a 10-year jail sentence for rapist, and most fundamentally, the question of whether a man can rape his wife.  It is not known whether the UNMIL officer would be prosecuted in keeping with the laws of Liberia.