Somali radio station awards AK-47s to competition-winning children

Caller number "7" @ 880-4955 wins a KLAQ t-shirt and CD which kicks ass unless you live in Somali.A Somali radio station run by al-Shabab, a group with links to al-Qaeda, has reportedly given out guns and hand grenades to children as prizes in a Koran-reciting competition. What would you expect as a prize for a children’s competition? Sweets? Almost definitely. A day out at the cinema? Possibly. But an AK-47? Surely not. Well, it appears that a radio station in Somalia has been giving out weapons as prizes to children in a competition.

The radio station at the centre of the controversy is Andulus radio, which is located near the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu. The competition took place during Ramadan, and was run by al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, and is in control of most of the south of Somalia. The group enforce strict compliance with Sharia law, and are fighting a civil war against the Somali government and the African Union forces currently in the country. This particular competition has been going on for three years. First prize in previous years was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

“Youths should use one hand for education and the other for a gun to defend Islam,” al-Shabab representative Mukhtar Robow said at the prize-giving ceremony"

Your starter for ten. Children had to recite the Koran, reports The Times of India, and spout knowledge about al-Shabab; what they won was, well, rifles and hand grenades. So if you knew the answer to this question: “Which place was Sheki Timajilic killed in?”, you’d be laughing all the way to the frontline. First and second prizes were AK-47 guns, money and Islamic books; the unlucky third place got some hand grenades. Martin Robinson on The Daily Mail said that the prizes in the competition were intended for children to “defend Islam.”