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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Uganda frees al-Qaeda suspect |
| 2006-04-18 |
| JAMAL Kiyemba, the Ugandan international terror suspect linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, has been freed by Ugandan security. The 27-year-old son of the late Simon Peter Musisi and Teresa Namuddu of Masaka, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of being an Al-Qaeda terrorist. He was jailed in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being deported to Uganda. Upon release from the notorious US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Britain denied him entry into London where his mother lives. He was subsequently deported to Uganda where, for two months, he was confined to a ‘safe house’, a beautiful storeyed mansion on Kololo hill. “I am now a very happy man because I am free to live my life. I have visited all my relatives. This is the first time I am free since 2002,” an excited Kiyemba said yesterday morning. He joined the Taliban in Pakistan along with hundreds of Muslims from all over the world who were willing to sacrifice their lives to fight for the cause of Islam. In March 2003, he was arrested by Pakistani security along with hundreds of foreigners, especially Arabs. At that time, Americans were paying $5,000 for a Taliban suspect handed over to them. “I was ready to assist my brothers there in any possible way, financially or by holding a gun, to defend them. We decided to join the war,” he said. But his joy upon being released has quickly brought misery. Kiyemba is afraid of the future, saying he does not know what to do, having dropped out of university in 2001 to join “an Islamic cause against western imperialists in Afghanistan” after the Taliban fell. “I am looking for a job. I want to complete the university course. I want to be independent. I need help,” he said in an impromptu roadside interview in Kampala. A man of medium height and light build, Kiyemba wore a skimpy traditional Muslim tunic and still wears a goatee moustache, characteristic of Tabliq Muslims. “Last week, the Uganda security told me that I am a free man. The officer told me, ‘You are free to go out and live your life but be careful with wrong groups out there.’ I am happy,” said the overjoyed man, whose first interview with Sunday Vision was in the Kololo ‘safe house.’ A security source said Uganda did not find any cause to continue to detain him. “He is a free man, but we shall nab him if he falls in wrong groups,” the source said. After the horror treatment in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay prisons, he expected horrible treatment in Uganda. But he is now full of praises for Uganda. “I did not expect anything good in Uganda but I was instead treated quite fairly. I thank the Uganda security for being good to me. I thank all Muslims in Uganda and elsewhere who have been praying for me,” stated the man, born in a strong Roman Catholic family but who turned radical Muslim in 2000. He went to St. Savio Primary School in Kisubi and the prestigious St. Mary’s College, Kisubi. However, his life changed dramatically when his parents divorced. His mother migrated to the UK and his father died in a car accident in 1989 and his maternal aunt found it increasingly difficult to look after him. In 1998, Kiyemba joined his mother, brothers and sisters in London, where he continued his education at Pope Paul II Secondary School in Wimbledon. Later, he joined De Montfort University in Leicester to study pharmacy. “I am determined to complete my studies but I need my independence. I need to sustain myself, not be a burden to relatives,” he said. He quit the university to live in Afghanistan where people were dressed in accordance with the Islamic culture and adultery was punishable by stoning to death. “Islam teaches that a Muslim should move away from a lesser Islamic environment to a better Islamic environment. That a person living in such bad surroundings would be punished except when he had no means to escape,” he told our sister paper Sunday Vision. After the September 11, 2001 twin towers attack, the Americans invaded Afghanistan. Reports of bombings there disturbed Kiyemba so much that he decided to go and assist his brothers in the war. Upon arrest, he spent six months in American prisons, first in Pakistan, then at the American Bagram Airbase in northern Afghanistan and finally in Guantanamo Bay. He does not want to talk about his ordeal in Guantanamo Bay. “In Guantanamo Bay, it was more of psychological torture. As a Muslim, you must be prepared to suffer and die for your religion. Being in Guantanamo Bay taught me one thing: to be patient and to put my trust in God,” he asserts. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |