STORY OF ASHO: GIRL WHO WAS STONED TO DEATH

DADAAB, KENYA–No one seems to remember the exact date when 13-year-old Asho Duhulow disappeared, but it was sometime in August. Days have a tendency of blending one into another and years drag on in the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, where Asho was born and raised.
As a little girl Asho had heard stories about relatives in Kismayo, a southern Somali port city on the Indian Ocean. It sounded magical compared to where she lived, crammed in with a dozen people, sharing two rooms and a dirty mattress, and relying on twice monthly handouts of food.
She had always talked about leaving, telling friends that one day she would reach Somalia, a country she had never seen.
Asho had never known any life other than the refugee camp, about 80 kilometres west of Somalia's border. Spread across a vast swath of desert, Dadaab was created by the UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency 17 years ago to provide temporary refuge for Somalis fleeing the chaos of Mogadishu. Today, it is the world's largest refugee camp, home to 230,000 people living in three areas called Hagadera, Ifo and Dagahaley, but collectively known as Dadaab.
In a camp where a constant influx of refugees fleeing Somalia brings hundreds of new faces daily, it would have been easy for a 13-year-old girl to leave unnoticed. Just as her dreams went unnoticed and her sickness was misunderstood.
The only thing that didn't go unnoticed was how Asho died.
Asho was born at the Hagadera hospital sometime in 1995, but her birth record was lost when bandits ransacked the family home and her mother cannot recall the month, let alone the day, when Asho entered the world.
Abdulle Abdi, who was working at the hospital, probably remembers best. He has seen many births, but he knows the family and remembers Asho because she was born a few months before his own daughter, who arrived on July 2. Now a Canadian citizen and living in Ottawa, where he resettled a decade ago, Abdi returned to Dadaab in July and saw Asho and her family. She was 13, like his daughter, and he says he can't recall anything remarkable in her behaviour.
On the day she disappeared, Asho spent the morning at Hagadera's Central Primary School. Students were on a break, but Asho had been going for extra help, since she had never been a strong student. School marks neatly recorded on dirty, lined paper show that in 2007 Asho rated 57th out 65 students in her grade. She had failed four of her six subjects, with math and science her worst. In social studies and a Somali language course, she squeaked by with 50 per cent.
The school's deputy headmaster, Abdurahman Abdullahi, remembers her as "very obedient and respectful," but others say she had a rebellious streak and had trouble sitting still.
How Asho left Dadaab is far from clear. Friends say she made good on her plan to find relatives in Somalia, and one neighbour told the family she had left Hagadera for Ifo, the nearest refugee camp, which is about a 30-minute drive across the sandy desert. The walk would have taken about half a day.
Her father searched for her in Ifo but was told that she had already crossed into Somalia, which meant she had somehow traveled more than 80 kilometres to the border.
Dadaab is rife with rumours, so there are many versions of what happened that are relayed as fact. Some say Asho was taken against her will, while many believe she got married.
Her family is convinced she ran away. "She used to say, `I want to see my grandmother,' and unfortunately one day she did," says her father, 55-year-old Ibrahim Duhulow. "She had told the kids she wanted to go. One of the neighbours in the block told us Asho left with a man, but we don't know who."
Her mother, Fatima Jinow Ahmed, says, "I sent her to school in the morning, and she did not come back."
ON THE MORNING OF Oct. 27, Ibrahim Duhulow's cellphone rang.
It was Asho, making contact with her family for the first time since her disappearance. She was crying. Uncontrollably. She didn't have much time but managed to tell her father that she was about to be killed and was concerned about a debt of 100 Kenyan shillings (about $1.50 Canadian) that she owed people in the Hagadera market. She asked her father if he could repay the men – 50 shillings each.
"She was taken from the phone before she could say goodbye," her father says.
A man who identified himself as a jail guard came on the line. But he did not say much, and would not tell Asho's father why they were holding her. Then the line went dead.
Asho was in Kismayo, more than 250 kilometres away. What happened hours later would make headlines around the world.
At about 4 p.m. that same day, armed guards dragged Asho before a crowd of hundreds. Her legs were partially buried so she could not escape, witnesses told local media. Then, a small group of men were given large rocks. Before the stoning began, some onlookers tried to intervene, running forward in protest. Militia, members of a radical Islamic group known as al Shabaab (The Youth), fired, and a young boy was reportedly killed.
Rock after rock struck Asho's head and chest. The breaks came when someone, reportedly a nurse, stepped forward to see if she was dead. Asho had a pulse; the stoning resumed.
Reuters later quoted a witness named Abdullahi Aden who described the scene when Asho was brought "screaming, as she was forcefully bound, legs and hands." Pictures, surreptitiously taken with a cellphone camera and posted on the Internet, reportedly record the gruesome aftermath. One blurry shot shows the bloodied face of a girl wearing a soiled pink sweater.

After Asho died, someone identifying himself as Sheik Hayakalah gave an interview to Somali Radio Shabelle. "The evidence came from her side and she officially confirmed her guilt while she told us that she was happy with the punishment under Islamic law," he said.
Asho had been sentenced to death for "adultery."
Stoning as capital punishment is sanctioned under Sharia law, although the killing of a 13-year-old girl is believed to be a first in Somalia.
Voice of America reported that three men had raped Asho and initially stated she was 23. Three days later, witnesses told Amnesty International that Asho had tried to report the rape to Kismayo's militia, but the militants arrested Asho along with the alleged offenders (who were later released or escaped).
"This was not justice, nor was it an execution," David Copeman, Amnesty International's Somalia campaigner, wrote in a statement. "This child suffered a horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayo."
(In media and Amnesty reports Asho's name is listed as Aisha).
A spokesperson for the Shabaab, which was designated a terrorist group by the U.S. in February, later apologized for the killing of the young bystander, vowing to punish the responsible gunman.
Asho was buried in Kismayo.
HASSAN TURKI first rose to prominence as he stood before a crowd of supporters in the fall of 2006 and anointed himself ruler of Kismayo.
"Brothers in Islam, we came from Mogadishu and we have thousands of fighters," he said. "Some are Somalis and others are from the Muslim world. You knew when U.S. troops arrived in Somalia in 1992, they came with their allied nations and now we have our alliance . . . If Christian-led America brought its infidels, we now call to our Muslim holy fighters to come join us."
Since U.S. commandos failed to apprehend warlord General Mohamed Farah Aideed in a disastrous mission that ended with Black Hawk helicopters being shot down, the bodies of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets and the deaths of hundreds of Somalis, there had been little international attention given to Somalia's incendiary war.
But two years ago, Hassan Abdullah Hersi al Turki, known throughout Somalia as Hassan Turki, suddenly became an international priority. His call to jihad was seen in the West as the next front in Osama bin Laden's global war, and wartorn Somalia, a perfect breeding ground for a new generation of fighters.
Hassan Turki was a member of the Shabaab, the radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union (or Union of Islamic Courts), which had seized power from Somalia's beleaguered transitional government in the summer of 2006. The Islamic court's strict adherence to Sharia law meant that women were harassed or flogged for failing to don a hijab, journalists were censored, music and cinemas were banned, and criminals were sentenced to death by stoning.
But they had also done what no other domestic or international force since 1991 could accomplish. They brought security and stability and because of that, they had support.
One of the group's most controversial leaders was Hassan Dahir Awyes, listed by both the United Nations and the U.S. as a "supporter of terrorism," with connections to Al Qaeda. Aweys invited a Toronto Star reporter into his home in October 2006. "Ask me anything," he said. Aweys dismissed concerns of connections to Afghanistan as "Western propaganda." And the 71-year-old leader with the nickname Old Fox wasn't always forthcoming with answers. Queried about his past association with bin Laden, he answered: "If I met Osama bin Laden, did I make a mistake?"
Two months after those interviews, Ethiopian tanks rolled across the border, followed by U.S. missiles. Aweys escaped while other Islamic leaders interviewed by the Star, including a Canadian known as Asparo, were killed in the ensuing war.
Sixty-four-year-old Hassan Turki had managed to escape, reportedly evading a U.S. missile strike and bombing by American fighter jets.
But the continued occupation by Ethiopia's troops propping up the unpopular transitional government only bolstered support for the Shabaab.
Today, the UN-backed transitional government is near collapse after years of corruption, infighting and heavy-handed tactics, all of which have hampered any efforts for support within Somalia or respect from the outside. Last week, Kenya announced sanctions against Somalia's president, including a ban on travel and freezing any assets, after he defied parliament and fired the prime minister.
Hassan Turki and another leader named Muktar Robow appear to be leading the Shabaab now, and the situation is considered as bad, if not worse, than it was 17 years ago. Brazen pirates have netted millions and control one of the world's vital shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden. The instability within Somalia has made it nearly impossible to stop them.
Ethiopia has vowed to withdraw troops by the end of the year, and moderate Islamist leaders, led by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, have denounced the Shabaab and are negotiating with the transitional government. But the power vacuum expected to follow Ethiopia's departure is worrying. Most analysts predict that the situation in Somalia will get worse.
Hassan Turki reportedly spends much of his time now in the bush near the Kenyan border and when in Kismayo, moves houses frequently. It's unclear if he ordered Asho's stoning or if renegade militants acted alone.
He has not condemned the killing.
CENTRAL PRIMARY School in the Hagadera camp is a rare oasis of hope in a desolate place. Each day the children arrive in bright blue uniforms, escaping the heat and congestion of the camp to start their morning under the shade of a large acacia tree. Funded by CARE, the school consists of tin and wooden classrooms, with the motto "Hard work never goes unrewarded" painted on a wall under a horseshoe banner reading "Education is a basic human right."
Muno Osman started her education here and was among the 10 per cent who managed to go on to high school. Osman went further and was one of the 18 students chosen last year for a scholarship to a Canadian university. She arrived in Toronto in August and now studies English at the University of Toronto.
Before she left Dadaab, she spent two years working at Central Primary, and it was here that she taught Asho.
She learned of Asho's death only recently, although she had heard about the stoning of a 13-year-old. Muno remembered Asho as a student who always struggled. She was restless. Like Muno, she wanted out.
Others in the camp describe Asho as "mentally ill," or "not right in the head." But in fact, Asho had epilepsy. During seizures, she would lose control of her bodily functions, twitching in the sand in her own urine as others looked on perplexed. Afterwards, she'd just stare for hours, exhausted.
Epilepsy is surprisingly common in the refugee camp, perhaps because of the high incidence of meningitis and high fevers among the babies, or perhaps because of a genetic predisposition.
Asho had been diagnosed as a child, but there was ignorance about the illness in the camp, so her epileptic episodes were often regarded as a psychological problem. She was being treated with drugs, but they didn't seem to work always, or she wasn't taking them regularly.
Her father still keeps the most recent prescription for Tegretol on a ripped piece of lined paper that he has folded tightly into the size of a matchbox and tucked into the waist of his pants.
He pulls it out and presses it flat on the table, as if looking for clues in the doctor's loopy handwriting.
There are no pictures of Asho. That prescription is all that is left to remind the family of their 13-year-old daughter, aside from a pair of cream-coloured cotton pants left on her mattress. But in a family of 10 children, practicality surpasses sentimentality, and it's likely a sibling or relative will wear them now.
For almost three months, Asho's family prayed every day that she would arrive back home. Now they wish they didn't know how she died.
"We have a lot of fear now," says her father.
Asho's parents, who came to Dadaab from Mogadishu when the government collapsed in 1991, belong to Somalia's Galgale minority clan. Ibrahim Duhulow was shot as he escaped and bears the scars of where the bullet entered and exited his body, near his hip. "When I fled they thought I was dead," he recalls. "There were many bodies on top of me."
Now the family fears the Shabaab is after them as retribution for speaking out after Asho's death. While murders are rare in the refugee camp, gunmen fired on an ambulance transporting 12 staff members of the German organization GTZ between camps on Monday, injuring a nurse. Refugees say that sexual assaults, robberies and knife attacks are common at night.
During the day, Asho's father works in the market and her mother looks after her other children in the fly-infested house of sticks. But at night they disperse to different houses belonging to friends.
They say they have already received verbal threats, and are imploring the UNHCR to resettle them quickly. But so far their efforts have failed, and they have no money or relatives anywhere outside of Somalia.
"We have been told since 1999 we'd be resettled," says Ibrahim Duhullow. "But still we wait."

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