News.com.au
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
AN Australian passport-holder is on the run in Africa after escaping from Kenyan police who arrested him over alleged links to an Islamic militant group.
On March 9 police who noticed his name was on an international security watch-list arrested Hussein Hashi Farah on the Kenya-Uganda border.
He escaped from custody four days later after reportedly complaining of asthma complications and being placed in his own room where two men dressed as businessmen visited him before his disappearance.
His escape came before counter-terrorism officials from Nairobi had been able to interview Farah.
Three policemen have since been sacked.
Farah, of Somali origin, is believed to have links to the al-Qaeda offshoot al-Shabbab, a group waging war against the United Nations-backed government in Somalia.
Al-Shabbab is a listed terrorist organisation in Australia. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade offered nothing on Mr Farah's whereabouts. The Attorney General's Department, responsible for intelligence and security matters, referred journalists to DFAT.
"It is not appropriate to speculate on the reasons for Mr Farah's arrest, nor the charges he might face," a DFAT spokeswoman said today.
The spokeswoman would not be drawn on the possibility Farah is not an Australian national and was travelling on a forged passport.
"We have no information at this stage as to whether Mr Farah was in possession of a forged passport," she said.
DFAT is keen to help Farah, who is entitled to consular assistance from the Australian Government if he requests it.
ASIO would not confirm or deny it had been watching Farah.
This story is one of a growing number linking Australia with al-Shabbab.
While the group is chiefly focussed on the installation of Sharia law in Somalia, it does work outside the country and is heavily involved with piracy off the north African coast.