Abdulsamad Ali
28 January 2008
Nairobi — Kenyans suspected to have been involved in terrorist acts before the fall of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia last year, are still in Ethiopia.
People who talked to the suspects last month confirmed assertions that none of them had been returned to Kenya as had been reported earlier.
There were claims that the group of Kenyans had been released from Ethiopian jails and handed over to the Kenya Government. "I personally talked to some of them and confirmed that 19 of them are still in Addis Ababa," said a close friend of some of the suspects.
The Kenyans are said to be under house arrest in Ethiopia and are being treated well while undergoing interrogations, said the source who did not wish to be named for fear of arrest.
Command base
One of the suspects, Salim Awadh is said to have been taken back to Mogadishu, the former command base of Al-Qaeda, where he was asked to identify the houses they lived in and operated from during the short stint of the Islamic Courts Union.
There are nine Kenyans under house arrest in Ethiopia in addition to another 10 from various other nationalities.
The Kenyans include Mr Awadh, Mr Said Mohammed Hamisi, Mr Swaleh Ali Tunza, Mr Hassan Shaaban Mwazume, Mr Bashir Chirag, Mr Kassim Musa Mwarusi and Mr Ali Musa Mwarusi. Others are Mr Abdalla Khalfan Tondwe and Mr Abdi Mohammed Abdillahi.
The Kenyan Government has been sending mixed signals over the whereabouts of the suspects, at times saying there were no Kenyans in Ethiopia and sometimes admitting that they are actually in Ethiopia.
Most wanted
In December last year Ms Fatma Chande, a Tanzanian married to Mr Awadh, confirmed that she was in the same military camp in Ethiopia with her husband.
"I was released in April last year after I was arrested by the Kenyan police in Kiamboni in January," she said in an exclusive interview with the Nation.
They were arrested alongside the wives of two most wanted suspected terrorists Harun Fazul and Swaleh Nabhan.
Both suspects have a US$5 million prize on their heads for information leading to their arrests.
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