thebengalcat:

Something you would not have seen in the media: Two Belgian UN ‘peacekeepers’ cheerfully roast a Somali boy over a fire, during a ‘humanitarian mission’ in Somalia in 1993

Kurt Coelus and Claude Baert were part of the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), which was a United States-led, United Nations-sanctioned multinational force and operated in Somalia between 5 December 1992 to 4 May 1993, in charge of carrying out United Nations Security Council Resolution 794: “to create a protected environment for conducting humanitarian operations in the southern half of Somalia.”

The two men were acquitted by a Brussels military court because of “insufficient evidence” and ruled that the incident was “a form of playing without violence.”

The incident received minimal coverage in the U.S. media, and the Belgian newspaper that originally published the photos received a bomb threat, which turned out to be made by a man who owns a local bar frequented by military personnel, including ‘peacekeepers’.