Thursday April 6, 2017
By TOM ODULA
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan police have arrested
seven Somali men for allegedly operating a human trafficking ring at a
refugee camp in the country's east, authorities said Wednesday.
The suspects had been
smuggling refugees from Dadaab camp to Nairobi, where they used fake
documents to leave for Europe and Canada, Northeastern Regional
Coordinator Mohamed Saleh said.
A court has said police can hold the suspects for 10 days to complete investigations.
Kenya wants to close Dadaab,
which hosts more than 200,000 Somali refugees, saying the camp has
become a training ground for al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants based
in neighboring Somalia. The government has offered no proof. A Kenyan
court in February blocked the camp's planned closure in May, calling the
order to close it unconstitutional.
Al-Shabab has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the extremists.
Droughts and instability
have displaced more than 2 million Somalis in recent decades, with about
900,000 sheltering in regional countries. The U.N. refugee agency says
Kenya hosts the highest number, around 324,000.
The arrests come nearly a
week after Kenya's security agencies arrested another group of suspected
human traffickers on the coast and accused them of facilitating the
movement of recruits for the Islamic State group and financing the
extremist group. The suspects included a Somali-born man and two
Kenyans.