Mohammed Abdulmalik

Kenyan father-of-three Mohammed Abdulmalik was transferred by his own government to US secret prison system. Abdulmalik now waits in Guantánamo Bay, while the Kenyan government refuses to admit responsibility or even accept that he is a Kenyan.

For 35 year-old Abdulmalik, Guantánamo is the just the latest stop on a nightmarish journey through America’s global secret prison network. His story exposes the global reach of a clandestine web of detention facilities that stretches thousands of miles across three continents.

It began with an arrest by Kenyan police in a hotel café in Mombasa in February 2007. He was held by Kenya’s Anti-Terrorism Police Unit, during which time he was badly beaten and interrogated over alleged plans to attack a forthcoming marathon event in Mombasa.

After two weeks of detention the Kenyan authorities apparently found no evidence linking Abdulmalik to any criminal activity. But he was not set free. Instead, Kenyan authorities drove him to an airport and handed him, with no form of judicial process, to US military personnel.

This was the beginning of Abdulmalik’s journey into the murky world of America's secret prisons, as he was transferred and held in Djibouti, Afghanistan and finally Guantánamo Bay, where he arrived in March 2007.

He was flown from Kenya to Djibouti, where he was detained in a shipping container on a US military base and told by interrogators that he was about to embark on a “long, long journey.”

This was no idle threat. Abdulmalik was flown to Afghanistan, where he was taken to the prison at Bagram Air Base and kept in appalling conditions, before being transferred briefly to a second prison in Afghanistan, and shuttled back to Bagram yet again.

Eventually, Abdulmalik was shackled to the floor of a transport plane, drugged, and flown from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay, where he remains today. He has never been charged with any offense, nor has he been given a chance to challenge his imprisonment – or even been told the official allegations against him.

Meanwhile, his story has spread at home. The idea that the Kenyan government had captured one of its own citizens and transferred him to US military custody has caused justified anger amongst civil rights groups in the country. In response, the Kenyan government tried to duck responsibility by denying that Abdulmalik is Kenyan.

This is a laughable claim. Dozens of people, including his father and the midwife who delivered him – in Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria – stand witness to his Kenyan birth and heritage. The Kenyan government also denies its involvement in Abdulmalik’s illegal transfer out of Kenya, saying instead that he had simply been deported.

This is also demonstrably false. The US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, confirmed on Kenyan radio that Abdulmalik was “moved to Guantánamo Bay with the full consent of the Kenyan government ... [as] part of collaboration between the two governments to fight global terrorism.”

In Guantánamo, Abdulmalik is no longer regularly interrogated, perhaps a sign that the US government have realised that he is not the big fish they thought he was. But there no plans for his release.

His case began with the Kenyan authorities, and it must end with them. Until Kenya admits that Abdulmalik is one of its nationals, his chances of release are slim. He will remain locked up thousands of miles from his home, a ghost prisoner plunged into the twilight world of secret detention by a government that would rather he simply did not exist