Foreign
ministry torments man on terror trail
A man who had gone to the foreign ministry to seek the whereabouts
of his relative deported to Somalia got the rude shock of his life
when he was manhandled by the ministry’s security personnel.
The
officials were apparently working on orders of the ministry’s
director for political affairs Mr Thomas Amolo.
The director was apparently irked by Hussein Jama’s relentless
efforts to seek the whereabouts of his cousin Abdi Muhammad Abdullahi
who was deported last month to Somalia after being arrested at the
Liboi border post while escaping the fighting in Somalia.
Speaking
to The Friday Bulletin, Hussein said his woes started a fortnight
ago when he went to the ministry hoping to solve jigsaw puzzle surrounding
his cousin’s illegal detention. He was directed to Amolo’s
office who advised him to present his case formally. This was done
through the family lawyer Martin Maina who wrote back detailing
and documenting information about Abdi who was prior to his arrest
working as an English teacher in Somalia. He was told to return
two weeks later.
His arrival at the ministry on Monday was however met with a cold
reception. Amolo informed him that he could not be helped as his
matter had reached a “dead end” and promptly ordered
him out of his office. On enquiring why the government was in the
business of expelling its nationals to foreign territories, the
director called in a security official who dragged him out of the
office.
“I
was manhandled, held by the shirt and dragged into the VIP lift
and taken to the ground floor for more questioning,” he said
narrating his ordeal to The Friday Bulletin.
He
was told not to expect any redress as Somalis were contributing
to insecurity in the country and selling guns in Eastleigh.”
Efforts
by The Friday Bulletin to get a comment from the director were unsuccessfully
as his secretary promised that he will call back. By the time we
went to press he had not done so.
Abdi
Muhammad Abdullahi, born twenty years ago in Nairobi’s Eastleigh
Section III estate went to Somalia in the wave of employment opportunities
for Kenyans during the six months of relative peace and stability
brought by the Union of Islamic Courts. Previously, he was a student
at the Oshwal Secondary School and Graffins College both located
in Nairobi.
His
father Muhammad Abdullahi Said met him last month at Karen police
station where he was held after being transferred from Garissa.
he later he called his parents saying that he was in shackles and
was being taken to Somalia. It was the last time they heard of him.
“To
date, we do not know his whereabouts or whether he is still alive,”
a distraught Hussein Jama told The Friday Bulletin.
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