 (SomaliNet) In protest against what they called the illegal detention and torture of fellow Muslims in an anti-terrorist drive urged on by the United States, Kenyan Muslims marched on police headquarters in Nairobi on Thursday. The protest involving a few dozen Kenyans followed months of simmering tensions between the east African nation's Muslim community and authorities they accuse of persecuting and arresting them on US government orders.
"We don't expect this in our country. Just how much power do the Americans have over the Kenyan government?" said Al-Amin Kimathi, chairman of Kenya's Muslim Human Rights Forum.
| That's human rights for Muslims, you see, and none for the rest of you infidels. |
However, American and Kenyan authorities said they could not immediately comment. Human Rights groups accuse Kenya of involvement in a clandestine US practice of detainee transfer.
| "You mean we have to comment on that nonsense again?" |
Kenyan police arrested scores of people on the Somali border in January and February after allied Ethiopian and Somali government troops chased Islamist fighters Washington accuses of having links to Al-Qaeda out of Mogadishu. Human rights groups say Kenyan authorities put dozens of terror suspects from Kenya on secret rendition flights to Ethiopia for interrogation by US officials. Local activists said none had been prosecuted in any court.
| That's right. They're all in Gitmo right now, gaining weight. |
"We know from a released prisoner that it is Americans doing the aggressive interrogating, and the Kenyan government is making it possible for them," Kimathi said.
| Thanks Kenya, we owe you one. |
Protesters demanded at police headquarters to know the whereabouts of two brothers who have gone missing. They said Kenyan police took the younger brother to Somalia, then Ethiopia, in January without charge or explanation. He was able to contact relatives once to tell of his torture, the activists say.
| Why take him to Somalia when Diego Garcia isn't so far away? |
Police seized his older brother last week outside a Nairobi mosque, according to relatives who were told nothing further and fear he faces the same fate as his younger brother.
| Just mindin' his own bidness outside a mosque ... |
|