Abdulsamad Ali
7 November 2007
Nairobi — Kenyans suspected of being involved in terrorist activities are in Ethiopia, a woman who was arrested alongside the group but later released said on Tuesday.
Ms Fatma Chande, whose husband is also among those still in Ethiopian military camp, broke her silence yesterday and said she was perturbed by reports that claimed that there were no Kenyans in Ethiopia connected to terrorism. She claimed she had been warned not to talk about the experience in Ethiopia.
"I was released in April this year after my arrest by the Kenyan police in Kiamboni in January while fleeing the war that came after the fall of the Islamic Courts Union," she said in an exclusive interview with the Nation. She did not say who warned her.
She narrated how they were arrested in Kiamboni and flown to Nairobi then to Mogadishu and later Ethiopia.
Ms Chande is a Tanzanian but married Mr Salim Awadh, a Kenyan, in 2000.
Terror suspect
Her group was arrested alongside the wife of "most wanted" terror suspect Harun Fazul's wife and her three children and the wife of Mr Swaleh Nabhan, another wanted suspect. Both suspects have a US$5 million (Sh335m) prize on their heads for information leading to their arrests.
She said her husband was a mobile phone technician and had left for Mogadishu for greener pastures.
"He had already been declared bankrupt by the Kenyan courts after his debts went up while his mobile phone repair shop was not making any profits," she said.
In Mogadishu, he became popular because of his phone repair skills, she said.
She said interrogators from the FBI, anti-terrorism police unit in Kenya, Ethiopian and Somali authorities claimed that her husband took part in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
"I told them that my husband's lifestyle could not justify their claims," she said.
She called on the Kenyan Government to return her husband to Kenya and charge him with any offences he may have committed. "He, and the others, belong to Kenya and they deserve justice in this country," she said.
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