17/01/2007
Bonny Apunyu
(SomaliNet) The police is holding 17 youths in Kenyan capital city Nairobi and Mombasa town over possible links to terrorism or Somalia’s Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), the police said yesterday.
The 17 Kenyan youths join some 42 Somalis in custody who are being interrogated by a combined team of the National Security Intelligence Service, the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit and the Immigration Department.
The 59 suspects were arrested by Kenyan soldiers patrolling the 1,500-kilometre border with Somalia.
Of these, four are held in different police stations in Coast, while the rest have been flown to Nairobi.
According to a senior police officer in Kenya, the Kenyans were arrested on suspicion they had been recruited into UIC.
“The youths are believed to have gone to Somalia to help the Islamist fighters but fled back to Kenya after the militia were routed by Ethiopian forces,” the officer said.
The ICU had recently captured power, sweeping away warlords who have ruled Somalia since the collapse of the central government with the fall of dictator Siad Barre in 1991. –Nation
SOURCE: Somalinet.com
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