A prominent Tanzanian human rights activist, Maria Sarungi Tsehai, has been released after being kidnapped on Sunday by three armed men on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya. This news is according to her husband who is now accusing Tanzania’s national intelligence service of irresponsibility.
Maria Sarungi Tsehai, a human rights defender and critic of Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, was abducted by three armed men and taken into a black car in the Kilimani neighbourhoo on Sunday afternoon, a report by Amnesty International had revealed.
“I am now safe, many thanks to everyone,” Sarungi Tsehai wrote on X several hours later. Her brief detention comes as the governments of both Tanzania and Kenya remain accused of kidnapping critics.
Sarungi Tsehai’s husband, David Tsehai, said the couple sought refuge in Nairobi four years ago after fleeing Tanzania.
“It was the scariest moment of my life,” he remarked in a video clip shared by the Law Society of Kenya late on Sunday. “There is no doubt in my mind (it is) the thugs of the Tanzania Information and Security Services (TISS) who are behind this.”
At the time of filing this report, spokespersons for Tanzania’s government and TISS did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. Kenya’s police spokesperson had also did not responded to a request for comment.
President Hassan had called an investigation into the abductions last year, when several government critics were abducted and injured or killed by unknown people, in a pattern by which, rights groups say, the government targets opponents in the run-up to national elections expected later this year.
Amnesty International researcher? Roland Ebole said Sarungi Tsehai’s abduction was another example of “transnational repression that is happening on Kenyan soil,” accusations Kenyan authorities deny. In November, a Ugandan opposition figure was kidnapped in Nairobi and forcibly repatriated to Kampala where he now faces charges in a military court
