IN KENYA, MYSTERY AND SILENCE OVER GULEN ABDUCTION
NAIROBI- How did a foreign citizen disappear from Kenya's police headquarters and end up under arrest in Turkey, despite a court order banning his extradition?
A week after it emerged that Selahaddin Gulen, whose uncle is a longtime foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had been forcibly returned to his country, Kenya has remained silent on the abduction and any role it might have played. applicant together with his family," saying that Selahaddin's brother, sister and 62 other family members were currently imprisoned.
"Their only crime was that they were related to one Fethullah Gulen," said a court filing.
The preacher, who lives in Pennsylvania, insists he is the head of a peaceful network of charities and companies, and denies any links to the 2016 coup bid.
In March, a Kenyan judge issued orders barring authorities from deporting Selahaddin - who was also in possession of an asylum seeker pass - to Turkey.
'Forcefully seized'
Under his bail conditions, Selahaddin had to report to the police every Monday.
According to an urgent court application filed by his lawyer Jotham Arwa on May 5, it was when he had presented himself at the main police headquarters in Nairobi two days previously that he was last seen.
Arwa accused Kenyan authorities of having "forcefulcomment.
Human Rights Watch's senior researcher in East Africa, Otsieno Namwaya, told AFP that in Kenya the narrative is that he was kidnapped by Turkish agents outside the police headquarters.
Namwaya added:
Even if that were true, how did he get out of the country?
How do foreign agents manage to grab someone, and go out with him and take him to JKIA (international airport) and fly him outside the country? Without anyone asking questions? How can the government keep quiet on that issue?"
Namwaya said HRW planned to send a letter to the government demanding an explanation.
"The Kenyatta administration has become very notorious for collaborating with foreign security agencies and kidnapping foreign nationals who are in Kenya for security reasons," he said.
Kenyatta vs the judiciary Namwaya recalled the executed by security agents.
Namwaya said HRW has heard many reports of Rwandans, Burundians, Congolese and Ethiopians being picked up in Kenya and forcibly returned to their homes, in many cases with the involvement of Kenyan security forces. He said:
The hostility of the Kenya government towards asylum seekers and refugees is just astonishing. The government as it is now doesn't respect the courts at all.
Last week, the Law Society of Kenya slammed a "continuous onslaught on the judiciary by the executive" after Kenyatta criticised the judiciary for recently blocking his attempts to reform
the constitution.
Kenyatta also brought up a particularly sore issue, the nullification by the Supreme Court of his election victory in 2017 over widespread irregularities.
Kenyatta later won the re- run which the opposition boycotted.
Kenya and Turkey have
close ties, but in 2016 Nairobi refused to close schools linked to the Gulenist movement despite pressure from Ankara.
In 1999, Turkish services arrested the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party Abdullah Ocalan, in Kenya. Ocalan remains imprisoned in Turkey.