Kenya seizes 65 illegal migrants from Ethiopia
15/10/2008 17:39
Kenyan authorities are holding 65 Ethiopian illegal migrants who were
arrested while heading to South Africa as part of a major smuggling
operation.
The Daily Nation newspaper reported today said migrants from
southern Ethiopia were seized by police in a container on a Mombasa-bound truck
on Monday evening.
One of the aliens said they paid 15.6 million shillings
(about US$205,000) to agents who promised to help them look for jobs in South
Africa, via Kenya.
Each paid Ethiopian Birr 24,000, raising questions as to
why people who could afford 240,000 shillings would be desperate for jobs in
South Africa.
Their spokesperson Meskin Markos, 25, praised the police,
saying "It was dark inside, with no ventilation and no space to move. We gasped
for air, the weak ones fainted. It was then that we started knocking on the
container to be freed. We were dying."
Police intercepted a truck carrying
the young Ethiopians on their way from Nairobi to the port of Mombasa.
"They
were packed in a 20-foot container on the truck when we stopped it at the Konza
roadblock on the Nairobi-Mombasa highway," Machakos police boss Patrick Lumumba
said.
The police took 33 to a Machakos court in eastern Kenya and pleaded
guilty to being in Kenya illegally. They appeared before the principal
magistrate Julie Oseko, where the court heard their visas had expired.
An
Immigration officer confirmed 28 suspects had valid travel documents. Four
others who had no travel papers were also charged. Oseko fined the 33 of them
5,000 shillings each or serve three months in jail, and then directed that they
be repatriated to Ethiopia after paying the fines or completing the jail
terms.
Earlier, anti-terrorist detectives yesterday interrogating the
suspects at the Machakos police station. The arrest exposed what appears a
larger syndicate.
"Their passports, all stamped at Moyale, showed they
entered Kenya between October 3 and 8," said Lumumba. They have been in Nairobi
as they awaited transport to Mombasa.
"We were tipped off that a truck with
young men loaded in a container was headed to Mombasa and that is when we
intercepted it and discovered that they were all aliens from southern Ethiopia,"
he added.
Lumumba said, adding that they had been crammed into the truck in
the Nairobi slum of Lunga Lunga.
Xinhua
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