Anti-terror police arrest Canadian citizen

By David Ochami

Anti-terrorist police in Nairobi are holding a Canadian tourist they claim was found taking pictures of a Kenyan border town on Monday.

Twenty three year old Sameh Ghinane arrived in Liboi town in a public transport bus and was promptly arrested and detained by local policemen after he tried to check into a hotel and take pictures of the remote town, which is 17km from Kenya’s border with Somalia.

According to Lagdera DC Titus Murugu, the Canadian with Egyptian roots, was arrested at about midday on Monday for taking pictures of the town. But independent accounts claimed he was whisked away as he rested outside a local motel.

Murugu acknowledged that documents found on the Egyptian Canadian showed Kenya’s Immigration authorities had issued him a two-week tourist visa but still argued police arrested him after "considering him a suspicious character."

Apparently, from the DC’s argument, police were aroused immediately the foreigner began "taking pictures of everything."

Following recent claims by Somalia’s interim government that foreign fighters stream into Somalia through Kenya, local police have been on the high alert. The border with Somalia has been volatile following recent cross-border raids and abductions by Somalia militiamen.

"He had a tourist visa of two weeks but tourists do not, normally come to this part of the country," said the DC, who disclosed that the foreigner was transported to Garissa, the provincial capital on Monday for overnight interrogation by local anti-terrorist detectives.

Though the DC confirmed that that Ghinane was transported to Nairobi on Wednesday, his fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Independent sources in Liboi and Garissa indicated the Canadian was a journalism student who travelled to the provincial town on Monday and later to Dadaab and Liboi intending to write reports on the Somalia refugee crisis.