Family cries foul over activist's woes in a Ugandan jail

Some countries would do anything, including going to war, to protect their citizens. Last year, China severed links with Japan after a captain of a Chinese vessel was detained. They demanded his release and an apology from Japan for normalcy to resume. Japan took the threat seriously and obliged. Citizenship brings rights and responsibilities but not so in Kenya, it seems, as we found out from the family of Al-Amin Kimathi.

The human rights crusader was arrested by Ugandan police in September when he went about to defend the rights of other Kenyans who had been renditioned to Uganda.

For defending the rights of Kenyans, he is now languishing in a Ugandan prison. The Government has remained silent, leaving his wife and children to fight for him. Kimathi is in custody at the notorious Luzira jail in Kampala, where according to his wife, Farida Saad, he is being held in solitary confinement, sleeps on the cold hard floor and is allowed only one hour of basking a day.

LOST WEIGHT

"I’ve been visiting him twice a month since he was arrested. Though he tells me all is well, he has physically changed. He is not the husband I knew, he has lost weight and looks older and weak," said Farida when I visited her at their home in South B. She adds, "They are only fed beans and posho and my husband has been denied the mattress I took to him. He sleeps on the cold concrete while the mattress is lying in the office of the prison officers in Luzira." In a staccato voice, the mother of two recalled how she dropped her husband at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on September 15, last year not knowing that he was destined for imprisonment. "I rushed him through the Mombasa Road traffic jam not knowing what awaited him," she says with regret. Farida says when he called him after two hours and could not pick his phone, she did not worry because she assumed he was tired and probably resting. Even when her subsequent calls went unanswered, she still did not think of anything sinister and wrote him a text message.

"Since we have not heard any bad news on planes en route Uganda, you arrived safely," read the short text message.

However, after two days without receiving any communication from Kimathi, she was informed that he had been arrested and would be charged for the Kampala bombings. "It was devastating because I was certain the charges were framed up but I still believed he would be released after interrogation," she says. But this has turned into months, six months now, since Kimathi was arrested and there is no hope of him being released anytime soon.

The Executive Co-ordinator of Muslims Human Rights Forum (MHRF) is facing 79 counts of murder, ten counts of attempted murder and three counts of terrorism in connection to the terrorist bombings in Kampala on July 11 last year.

And for the last six months, Farida and her four children have lived without their father and they do not know what tomorrow holds for them. The Government, too, has deserted them. And with his absence, things have been difficult for the family. Farida, who was an assistant manager at the Postal Corporation of Kenya, resigned after receiving several warning letters from her employer for devoting much time to her family affairs. "I worked for Posta for 19 years and after my husband was arrested, things became difficult because I had to ask for leave of absence to visit him in jail. That is when warning letters started landing on my desk that I was not concentrating on my work," she says. She says she does not understand why she was receiving the letters yet she would get permission from her managers who knew what was going on. "I then decided to resign because I would eventually be sacked," she adds. She says efforts to seek audience from the Government have been futile making her believe the Government is behind her husband’s tribulation. Despite the serious charges her husband faces, she says no police officers have ever conducted a search in her house. "Police have never come to our house to conduct searches or asked me to record a statement on my husband if they think he is a terrorist," she says.

Before his arrest, Kimathi had been in the forefront in exposing and documenting human rights violations, arbitrary detention and unlawful renditions in the context of counter-terrorism operations in East and Horn of Africa.

RIGHTS DEFENDER

As a human rights defender, Kimathi constantly angered not only the Kenyan government but also the US, whom he accused of complicity in renditions carried out in Kenya since 2007. His brother Onesmus Murithi sees the Government’s hand in Kimathi’s troubles, saying it has never come out clearly to say why he is being held in Uganda. Kimathi was arrested for alleged involvement in the Kampala bombings yet he had travelled to attend court hearings of other Kenyans who were arrested in Nairobi and whisked in secrecy to Kampala. "It is not logical that my brother participated in the bombings and still had the guts to go to Uganda. This is not logical," says Murithi. "My brother is a victim of broader and powerful forces who want to punish him for his effort to champion the rights of Kenyans," he adds. "As the Co-ordinator of the Muslim Human Rights Forum set up in 2005, Al-Amin Kimathi has beenexposing the illegal activities of the Government and human rights abuses suffered by Muslims under the pretence of fighting terror," says Murithi.

Farouk Machanje a member of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, says the human rights activist has been a marked man. "He is obviously a thorn in the flesh of US and the Government and his innocent incursion into Kampala provided an excellent opportunity to take him out," says Machanje. He accuses the Anti-terrorism Police Unit, which he alleges serves the interests of western countries, of being behind the arrest of Kimathi and the seven Kenyans accused of terrorism in Uganda. "The Kenyan security and specifically ATPU has built a reputation as a lapdog of western intelligence at the cost of its primary responsibility to Kenyans," he says. Clara Gutteridge, an investigator with Reprieve, one of the human rights watchdogs in Uganda, says the treatment of the human rights activist is disgraceful and the Government of Uganda should release him. "Kimathi has been a beacon of hope to some of the marginalised people in Africa, and his treatment an indication of the depths to which the Ugandan government will stoop to prevent light from being shone on their illegal practices," she says. Gutteridge adds, "The international community must not stand by as one of the most strident human rights defenders is locked away on trumped up charges."

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* This article first appeared in the Kenya’s The Standard.