NAIROBI, 21 December 2004 — Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki yesterday told the country’s Muslims, who have long complained of police harassment, that the government would shelter them from unfair treatment stemming from the fight against terrorism, his office said.
Kibaki said that “no Kenyan will be harassed unnecessarily in the pretext of fighting terrorism,” according a statement released by his press office, after Kibaki held talks with Muslim leaders in the port city of Mombasa.
“As a government, we want to assure you that we treat all Kenyans equally and no one will be discriminated against on the basis of religion, tribe or otherwise,” Kibaki said.
Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims (SUPKEM) says Muslims make up 35 percent of Kenya’s 30-million-strong population. The last population census in 1989 put the figure at 23 percent.
The Muslim leaders complained to the president that “innocent men” have been harassed by police, including an Algerian cleric, Ahmed Mohammed Haji, arrested early December on suspicion of involvement in terrorism activities, one of the leaders said.
“The president told us that the government will investigate alleged cases of arbitrary arrests and harassment of Muslims,” the secretary-general of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK), Sheikh Mohammed Dor, told AFP. Seven Kenyan Muslim men are currently facing charges arising from the bombings of a hotel near the port city of Mombasa in November 2002, and of the US Embassy in Nairobi in 1998.
The Mombasa attack killed 18 people, and the Nairobi bombing left 213 dead.
