‘The memory comes back’: Abducted children return traumatised in Mozambique

Abducted children return home traumatised in Mozambique

*Names have been changed for security reasons

Chiure, Mozambique - Sitting in front of their mudbrick home in Chiure - a town in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province - Ismael* and Estebao* stare at the ground, lost in a memory that still haunts them.

Both boys - brothers aged 13 and 10 - were abducted in November by members of the ISIL affiliate in Mozambique (ISM), known locally as al‑Shabab, though it has no links to the Somali armed group with the same name.

“We were playing - it was five in the afternoon - when a group of armed men entered the village and captured all of us,” Ismael whispers, speaking in Portuguese through a translator.