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Tanzania: Pemba Elders Arrested After Secession Demand
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The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
13 May 2008
Posted to the web 13 May 2008
Salma Said and Mkinga Mkinga
Zanzibar
Security officers yesterday arrested the 12 elders who last week demanded Pemba's separation from Zanzibar, eyewitnesses said.
Civic United Front (CUF) security officer Said Miraji said the elders were arrested just after midnight and taken to an unknown location.
The elders last week presented their plea to a top United Nations official in Dar es Salaam, Mr Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, who doubles as the UN resident coordinator, and asked him to present their demand to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.
The arrest claim comes just three days after the Government warned that the decision amounted to treason, comparing it with what took place recently in Comoro islands.
However, neither South Pemba regional police boss Ameir Khatib nor the Zanzibar police commissioner Khamis Mohamed Simba could confirm reports of the arrests.
Mr Khatib had earlier referred The Citizen to Mr Simba.
Mr Simba said he had not received reports from Pemba Island and requested to be allowed to respond on the matter today
"I have just heard the news from you journalists, it is too early to comment on the matter.
I will follow up on the matter to establish what happened and why they were arrested.
"Let us leave it to the relevant authority to do the investigation, if there's truth, a legal action should be taken and if they are proved innocent, they should be freed," Mr Simba said.
Reached for comment, the director of criminal investigations, Mr Robert Manumba, could not give details saying the Zanzibar police commissioner was working on the matter.
But a family member of Mr Ahmed Marshed Khamis, one of those reportedly arrested, told The Citizen that Mr Khamis was picked up at around 11.30pm at his home in Mkanjuni area, South Pemba Region.
Speaking to The Citizen by telephone yesterday, Mr Khamis's wife, Sharifa Mussa, said the security men came when the family had already retired to bed.
"We heard a deafening bang at the door before five policemen forced their way into the house.
They entered the bedroom and pulled my husband out," she said.
She said the officers earlier went to look for her husband at Machomanne area, where he has another family, and traced him to his Mkanjuni home after they did not find him.
The following morning the same group of policemen returned in the company of Mr Khamis and searched house.
The search, according to Mrs Khamis, was carried in all the rooms before the officers left with Mr Khamis without taking anything from the house.
Another eyewitness, Zainab Omar Hamad, who was also arrested on the same night, said she was taken to the central police station to record a statement on the whereabouts of his mother, Mrs Fatma Abdallah Hamad, who was wanted by police.
She had stayed in police custody for more than two hours after she was arrested at her home in Wete within the Northern region.
Some Pemba residents who talked to this reporter expressed fears following the immediate arrest of the group associated with the secession plea sent to the UN.
"We are used to such arrests and beatings, we have decided to present our sentiment because when they arrest you, and they will thoroughly beat you up.
We wholly support the document presented to the UN, and we'll continue to fight for our rights, let them continue with the arrest," said an old man who demanded anonymity.
But when asked by journalists to say the position of the police force on news that residents of Pemba wants to pull out of Zanzibar, commissioner Simba said that he was not an angel to know everything in the country.
Following the arrest, CUF said yesterday it has directed its legislators to take care of the families of the 'detainees', as the party struggles to establish their fate.
Asked why CUF was taking care of the 'detainees' families Mr Miraji said majority of those arrested were their members.
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The move initiated by Pemba elders just two weeks after the collapse of Zanzibar peace accord, which previously cited power sharing as the solution to Zanzibar political crisis, is against the constitution according to the Government.
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