Somalia has begun repatriating troops it said it sent for training in neighbouring Eritrea, after protests in several Somali cities over accusations that they had been recruited under false pretences and held captive.
The soldiers were sent to Eritrea during former president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo's administration. After coming to power in May, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's government said that 5,000 missing soldiers had been "found" in Eritrea and would beSeveral of their family members told Reuters last year that the men had been recruited by Somalia's federal government for jobs in Qatar, but that they then surfaced in Eritrea where they were forced to serve in the military.
The apparent secretive recruitment of young Somali men stirred public anger and triggered protests in the capital Mogadishu and elsewhere.Somali Defence minister Abdulqadir Mohamed Nur told Reuters that a first batch of troops - he did not specify how many - from Eritrea had arrived in Somalia on Wednesday.
Little is known about what the Somali troops did while in Eritrea. A U.N. report last year cited reports that some of them were sent to fight in a war in neighbouring Ethiopia's Tigray region.Abdisalam Guled, former deputy director of Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency who first revealed the soldiers' presence in Eritrea, told Reuters that their return was great news but called for more transparency.
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