Bangladesh (MNN) — Nineteen Christian kids recently escaped a jihadist fate in Bangladesh.
According to International Christian Concern (ICC), the children were rescued at a bus stop in the capital city of Dhaka by college students. The Dhaka University students also captured Binoy Tripura, the man who was trafficking these children.
Tripura took the children, belonging to the Tripura tribe, from their rural homes to Dhaka by bus. When the bus stopped at a rest area, a dozen of the children managed to run away and locate a phone to call their parents.
Parents alerted Tripura students attending Dhaka University to the situation, and they were able to rescue the remaining six kids when the bus arrived in Dhaka. They also got Binoy, who is now in police custody.
ICC says Tripura confessed that he "collected the kids from their parents with lies and convinced them that [he] will admit all the kids to a Missionary [Christian] school in Dhaka."
In reality, Tripura planned to sell these kids to madrassas, fundamentalist Islamic boarding schools that train children for terrorism. At these centers, children are forced to learn Arabic, study the Quran and Muslim prayers, and pray five times a day. ICC says kids rescued from these centers said that if they refused, they were tortured.
"I was beaten many, many times because I didn't want to pray," one rescued boy said.
It's not the first time children have been trafficked to madrassas. More than 150 kids have been rescued from situations like this since July 2012 alone, says ICC. ICC's sources told them traffickers target low-income Christian families in rural areas because of their faith and vulnerability.
These sources also indicate that approximately 200 children are still in need of rescue. Ask God to deliver them from the hands of evil.
