Social Development Ministry launches probe into missing boy’s detention

AMMAN — Social Development Minister Reem Abu Hassan on Wednesday formed an internal committee to investigate the role of the ministry and the police in the case of a boy who was detained at a juvenile centre for five days after being reported missing by his family, official sources said.

Yousef Mohammad, 11, who went missing last Thursday evening in Tabarbour, was found on Monday at the centre in Madaba where underage beggars are sent for rehabilitation.

The boy went to a nearby mosque to perform evening prayers and never returned home, according to his family, who issued pleas through the media and social networks urging the public to help them locate the missing child.

The police also searched for the boy for four days. 

Social Development Ministry employees detained the boy on Thursday night after they saw him begging on a street in Tabarbour and referred him to a police station, Mahmoud Tarawneh, the minister’s media adviser told The Jordan Times earlier this week.

Mohammad was later referred to the Madaba Juvenile Centre, where “street beggars are sent”, according to the ministry official. 

The child was referred to the centre “for protection since he was seen wandering in the streets at night and the team saw him taking money from a woman and concluded that he was begging”, a senior official said.

The employees at the centre asked the child to provide them with a number to contact his family, but he refused, according to the official.

The child’s family, however, denied the officials’ claims saying that the boy was only escorting his aunt to a taxi and she gave him half a dinar.

“The internal committee will examine the procedures that resulted in him being picked up from the streets and detained at the centre to determine the measures adopted by both the police and the ministry’s anti-vagrancy teams,” the official explained.

Meanwhile, Abu Hassan issued orders for a delegation from the ministry to visit the family and follow up on the well-being of the child.

The boy’s uncle, Maher Anabtawi, told The Jordan Times on Wednesday that he filed a complaint against the ministry because “it caused us agony and pain to the boy and his mother because they locked our son up for five days on begging charges, although he was not begging, and told them that when they detained him.”