Child Soldier's Tale Illustrates Mali's Dirty War

Story here. Excerpt:

'SEVARE, Mali (AP) — The boy sits with his knees tucked under his chest on the concrete floor of the police station here, his adolescent face a tableau of fear. He's still garbed in the knee-length tunic he was ordered to wear by the Islamic extremist who recruited him.

It's these same clothes, styled after those worn by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century, which gave him away when he tried to flee earlier this week. They have now become his prison garb.

Adama Drabo is 16, and his recruitment into the ranks of a group designated as a terrorist organization, followed by his violent interrogation at the hands of the Malian army, underscores the obstacles faced by France as it tries to wash its former West African colony clean of the al-Qaida-linked fighters occupying it.'