GARISSA (Kenya), Feb 10 (NNN-XINHUA) — A Kenyan court released two foreigners who were arrested last month at the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya’s Garissa County on suspicion of having links with the al-Shabab terror group.
Garissa Chief Magistrate Cosmas Maundu said the two — Sulub Warfa from New Zealand but of Somali origin and Sakawedin Abdullahi from Ethiopia — had no case to answer and therefore were released unconditionally.
According to the prosecution, the two men’s passports are valid, and they entered the country legally.
The two foreigners had been held by the anti-terror police for 10 days before appearing in court on Friday. According to investigators, Warfa had changed his name from Ramadhan Yusuf to Sulub Warfa.
Addressing journalists outside the court, Warfa said that changing one’s name in New Zealand is not a crime, adding that this was one of the things that landed him into problems with the Kenyan police.
“I traveled all the way from Nairobi to Garissa then to Dadajabula but on my way back I was stopped at a road block at Hagarbul where police officers demanded my driving license which I produced and then my passport which I also produced,” he said.
“But all of a sudden they told me to pack my vehicle and get out of it as they drew their guns. This really shocked me. They searched my car and wanted to hear nothing from me, saying I was a terror suspect,” Warfa told journalists.
He said that terming him a terror suspect without verifying his traveling documents came as a shock.
He demanded an apology from the police for linking him to terrorism which he said had not only shocked his family back home but had ruined his reputation.
The arrest of the two foreigners came amid enhanced security in the country after al-Shabab terrorists struck a hotel and business complex in Nairobi on Jan. 15, killing 21 people and injuring several others. — NNN-XINHUA
