Somalia Detains 5 Foreigners

Police here said Friday that they had arrested four Iraqi Kurds and one Palestinian for questioning over possible links to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network or other extremist groups.

Police commander Col. Abdi Hassan Awale said the men were arrested three days ago and have been detained pending investigations. He said they appeared to have entered Somalia without permission.

Somalia’s transitional national government is keen to show it is cooperating in the U.S. war on terrorism, amid fears that the country could become a target for U.S. military action.

One of the arrested men met international journalists in Mogadishu last month asking for help. He said he was a refugee who had fled Iraq for political reasons but had been picked up by authorities in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and deported to Somalia.

The five men are believed to have been living in Mogadishu for about a year, according to Ali Jama, owner of the Saluxidin restaurant, where they frequently ate and where they were arrested.

Jama said one of the men told him he was a dentist.

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees said it was aware of a large number of refugees stuck in Mogadishu from countries including Iraq and Ethiopia, many of whom had been in contact with the agency requesting help or asylum.

Paul Stromberg, a UNHCR spokesman in Nairobi, said the agency had been unable to evaluate their cases or help them because of chronic insecurity in Mogadishu, which has prevented the agency from opening a properly staffed office there.

“We know of some people who say they wandered around through several states before being deported to Mogadishu,” he said.

Stromberg said he did not know if the arrested men were part of the same group of people who had contacted UNHCR in the past.

“But if what these people say is true, it really is a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

Two other members of the group flew to Nairobi recently, where they were picked up by Kenyan police and deported to their home countries.

An officer who declined to be named said police also arrested a Saudi national in October on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda. He was handed over to Saudi authorities for questioning.

Somalia, which dissolved into chaos after the 1991 fall of President Mohamed Siad Barre, has been cited as a possible haven for Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers if they flee Central Asia.

The transitional government, which was set up after a conference of clan leaders and elders in Djibouti last year, controls only parts of the capital and pockets of the rest of the country.

It is opposed by a loose coalition of warlords, backed by Ethiopia, who accuse the government of harboring extremists linked to Bin Laden.