Abdulsamad Ali
16 August 2008
Nairobi — Nine Kenyans arrested in January last year while fleeing from Somalia after the fall of the Islamic Courts Union spoke out for the first time on Friday from their detention camp in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and pleaded to be brought back home.
It also emerged that only nine Kenyans and not 17 were being held in Ethiopia where they were taken after their arrest.
Speaking to Sunday Nation on phone, they said they were willing to face the law if the government felt they had committed a crime or were members of the Al Qaeda terror network instead of languishing in the secret cells.
The Kenyans said their cells were in deplorable conditions and guarded by Ethiopian policemen who do not understand English but who constantly beat them up.
Little light
Out of the more than 100 suspected Al Qaeda members alleged to have been part of the ICU, ousted by Ethiopian military-led forces in December 2006, only the Kenyans remained in detention, they said.
Six of them live in a 12-by-12 cell while the other three are in an eight-by-six cubicle at Jarmeda's Old Stadium on Haille sellasie Avenue.
They are Said Khamis Mohammed, Kassim Mwarusi, Ali Musa Mwarusi, Swaleh Ali Tunza, Hassan Shaaban Mwazume, Bashir Chirag Hussein, Abdalla Khalfan Tondwe, Abdi Mohammed Abdullahi and Salim Awadh Salim.
"The secret cells are protected by 15-metre high walls and a small window that sneaks in little light, if any," the cellmates said.
The stadium is opposite a military camp and police flats. They said they only get out for 10 minutes to have either lunch, breakfast or dinner.
Due to the cold weather that is characteristic of Addis Ababa, water seeps through the floor of their cells, wetting their mattresses, the detainees said.
Secret house
They wondered why they were still being held, one year and eight months since they were arrested while trying to cross into Kenya through Kiunga in Lamu.
"Immediately after our arrest we were transferred to Nairobi where we were interrogated for about a month and later secretly flown to underground cells in Baidoa, Somalia," they said.
They were then airlifted to Ethiopia where they have spent the rest of the time, save for occasional transfers from the cells to Bole in a secret house.
Two of them have developed health complications because of beatings by the guards, they told Sunday Nation. One of them, Mr Hussein, 50, is suffering from back pains and a broken leg after he was roughed up by 10 policemen, they said.
Mr Hassan Mwazume said he had a broken elbow, an injury he first sustained in a road accident during his transfer to Mombasa from Kiunga by anti-terrorism police.
He says his health was deteriorating going by the symptoms he has been grappling with lately. "I feel very cold on my left side ribs," he said.
They said they have been separately interrogated by agents from American Federal Bureau of Investigations and Criminal Investigation Agency; Britain's Scotland Yard and Israel's Mossad over their suspected links to Al Qaeda.
"They interviewed us in turns and said they did not find anything on us and recommended that we be released.
However the Kenya Government has not acted," claimed Mr Awadh.
Last week a team of Kenyan Criminal Investigations Deparatment and anti-terrorism police officers visited, interviewed them and took pictures.
"Three days before the visit we were treated well and for the first time we sun-bathed. However after they left, the same cruel treatment resumed," they said.
Mr Awadh said the detainees were Kenyans and they expected to be treated according to Kenyan laws. "We are in a country that we do not belong to, we have been here without any due process of the law," he said.
Documents
Mr Hassan Mwazume said if they are suspected of having committed any crimes then they should be charged in Kenya. They had only gone to Somalia to work and had nothing to do with terrorism. They also had documents to prove they were Kenyans.
"Some of us were seeking jobs while others were working. We have no links to terrorism but if our government feels that we are linked to terrorism, we are ready to be charged in a court of law than living in these squalid conditions," said Mr Khamis.
Mr Hussein said they deserved to be in Kenya where they have families. "For how long will this mistreatment go on? We seek the Government's intervention," he said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula recently said the Government was in the process of bringing back the suspects.
Nominated MP Sheikh Mohammed Dor, also the secretary general of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, said Muslim leaders are pushing the government to bring back the individuals.
"I have been promised that the Government was working hard to bring them back home. I hope this will happen soon," he said.
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