A SOMALI Leaving Cert student has issued a plea on behalf of her mentally ill brother.
Ifrah Aweys, who is in sixth year at Margaret Alyward Community School in Drumcondra on Dublin’s northside, told Metro Éireann that her brother Fahad (17) is being detained in a Nairobi jail on account of his intellectual difficulties.
The Aweys family had left for Kenya in 2006 due to instability in Somalia. Ifrah Aweys, however, came to Ireland, where she was accorded refugee status.
In the meantime, she says her brother Fahad – who has a mental illness – was detained by Kenyan police over four months ago and is being held in Nairobi’s Industrial Area Prison.
“He was walking in the middle of the night,” she told Metro Éireann. “They told him to stop walking. Then they took him to prison.”
A clearly upset Aweys added that her family has since learned that Fahad has been beaten in jail. “[My sister] asked him who beat you and he’s laughing, he doesn’t know anything.”
Aweys said she has been unable to study, such is the stress of the situation, and desperately wants Fahad released. The Somali woman is asking human rights groups to look into her brother’s predicament.
According to MindFreedom, which campaigns for human rights for the mentally ill, some people in Kenya still hold traditional beliefs on mental illness, believing that the person must have offended the community, or that spirits or demons are after them.
Metro Éireann has sent details of Fahad’s case to Amnesty International Ireland, and the organisation says it will investigate.
