Thursday, August 12, 2010
They said on Wednesday the government broke extradition laws and vowed to fight it through legal means.
National Muslim Leaders Forum chairman Abdullahi Abdi likened the extradition to discrimination that set a bad precedent in the wake of a new legal order. “Our laws demand that no person may be extradited unless a court of law issues such orders.
“We do not know of their innocence or guilt. We know that the law presumes any person to be innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, innocent Kenyans were forcibly taken to Uganda,” Mr Abdi said in Nairobi.
Mr Hussein Hassan, Mr Mohammed Adan Abdow, and Mr Idris Magondu, who are in remand, appeared before a magistrate’s court in Uganda on July 30 for plotting the bombing that killed 76 people as they watched the World Cup final match.
They faced murder, terrorism and attempted murder charges, but were not allowed to take pleas. Mr Abdi said the case brings back memories of the days when Muslims were arbitrarily arrested and taken to Somalia, Ethiopia and Guantanamo Bay on suspicious grounds.
He said since the Kampala incident, Muslims were living in fear following increased cases of night raids, arrests and illegal detentions by police in Mombasa and Nairobi.
Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims secretary-general Adan Wachu said Muslims don’t want to enter the holy month of Ramadhan with anger and fights with the government.
Muslim Human Rights Forum chairman Al Amin Kimathi said they had filed a case in Kampala to challenge the extradition of the suspects. Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe asked the leaders to lodge the complaint with the authorities through the right channels.
Suicide bombers struck an Ethiopian restaurant and a rugby club in Kampala. Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the blast and threatened more attacks unless Uganda and Burundi withdraw troops from Somalia where they are part of the AU peace keeping force.
Source: Daily Nation