TWO Belgian paratroopers photographed swinging a Somali boy over an open fire escaped with a reprimand from a military court in Brussels yesterday.

 Claude Baert and Kurt Coelus, who were in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Somalia in 1993, had said they were only "playing a game".

 The presiding judge, who sat with four senior officers, said the game had been "dangerous and not very intelligent", but there was nothing to show they meant the child harm so it was not a war crime, which carries an automatic 15-year sentence.