By Bogonko Bosire
Monday, November 06, 2006
The Islamists were detained by immigration officials on Saturday after a small plane carrying them from the southern Somali port of Kismayo to Mogadishu was diverted for weather reasons and landed by mistake in Nairobi, they said.
The 13 detainees, all from Somalia's southern Juba Valley region of which Kismayo is the capital, were released and sent back to Somalia on Sunday after authorities here determined they posed no risk, police said.
"After realising that they did not have ill intentions, we deported them today," a senior Kenyan police official said, adding that they had arrived at and departed from Nairobi's Wilson Airport.
The official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the men were detained because they had been unable to produce travel documents on their arrival in Kenya, just two days after the US terror warning was issued.
In Mogadishu, Islamist officials confirmed the incident.
They said it occurred because fog in the capital prevented the plane from landing there and instrument error resulted in the craft landing in Kenya instead of back in Kismayo, about 500km south of Mogadishu.
They identified those on board as Sheikh Ahmed Madobe, the commander of an Islamist-allied militia in the Juba Valley, Ibrahim Shukri, the Islamist spokesperson in the region, and 11 militiamen, but declined to comment further.
On Thursday, the United States warned that extremist elements in Somalia had threatened suicide attacks in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia and urged US citizens there to use "extreme caution" at prominent public places.
Officials in the two countries have played down the warning, which came amid growing fears of all-out war between the Islamists and the weak Somali government that many believe could ignite a regional conflict.
But majority-Christian Kenya and Ethiopia have incurred the anger of the Islamists, some of whom are accused of al-Qaeda ties and the Somali government says were behind a failed suicide car bomb attempt to kill its interim president.
The Islamists have declared "jihad," or holy war, on Ethiopian troops allegedly in Somalia to protect the government.
Ethiopia denies Islamist charges it has some 12 000 soldiers in Somalia but acknowledges sending advisers to assist the government.
Kenya, meanwhile, supports a Somali government call, also backed by Ethiopia, for the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force that the Islamists have vowed to fight.
Peace talks aimed at averting a full-scale war between Islamists and the government failed last week in Sudan over Islamist demands for Ethiopian troops to withdraw and Kenya to be removed as co-mediator.
Source: AFP, Nov 6, 2006