Tortured boy flies to UK for treatment
A 10-year-old boy who suffered severe burns in Sierra Leone after he was tortured by rebels has arrived in the UK to undergo medical treatment.
Issa Kamara is staying with a family in Norfolk in preparation to begin treatment at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust.
Hopes of bringing Issa to the UK had initially been dashed by Government red tape, until Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott intervened.
A trust spokesman says doctors are due to assess Issa's injuries.
"We have said on several occasions that it is a question of assessing what is required on the basis of a physical examination of the boy rather than simply basing clinical plans on X-ray images and photographs," he said.
But he added: "Obviously the nature of the surgery may be such that it may require that he needs more than one operation."
Issa, who is from a farming family in a village in the north of Sierra Leone, was being cared for by US-based charity the Leonenet Street Children's Project in his country's capital, Freetown.
He has little trust of adults after he was captured by rebels of the Revolutionary United Front in 1998 with his mother Mabinty. She was raped and made to clap and sing while rebels held her son over a fire.
He needs corrective surgery to burns on his face and an operation to correct bones in his hand and wrist which are now growing the wrong way.
Norwich North Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson, who lobbied on behalf of Issa, says he is delighted that the boy had arrived.
