Aydin's controversial departure lifts lid on the politics of deportation

Few foreigners have caused as much of a stir as Harun Aydin, the Turkish national who left the country under unclear circumstances earlier this week.

For one week, he rivalled the country’s politicos for space in the evening news. His association with Deputy President William Ruto cast him as some enigmatic figure. A fortnight ago, Aydin was only identified as a Turkish national in Ruto’s entourage to the botched Uganda trip.

In the days that followed, the country would learn more about the man Ruto termed “an investor in modern fruit farming”. Then came the news that he shared names with a Turk who was arrested in Germany two decades ago over links to terrorism, and Aydin’s character in the public’s eye would morph again.

As though on cue, Interior ministry would wade into the saga, saying that it was investigating the Turk over claims of terrorism.

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“We have heard them (Turkey Embassy), but let them also allow us to use our other methods of checking. There is no point in pushing a criminal allegation and conclusion on someone if they are not. I don’t think it hurts to give us some little time to check,” Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho would tell The Standard in response to assurances by the Turkey Embassy that Aydin was clean.

Ruto was the first and the loudest to protest what he called political pettiness, vouching for the character of the Turkish national introduced to Kenyans’ psyche two weeks ago.

As all this was happening, Aydin was planning his return to Kenya from Uganda. The trip would end in a weekend in the custody of anti-terrorism police, and a return to his home country as his lawyers prepared to mount his defence in court.

His lawyers would at one point claim that the Turk had been deported, later say that he was coerced into agreeing to leave the country. On Friday, Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i clarified that the Government had deported Aydin.

Every other day across the world, foreigners are deported to their countries of origin for varying reasons. Such people include illegal immigrants and suspected criminals.

Aydin was deported owing to alleged links to suspected money laundering networks and claims of being in the country illegally. Dr Matiang’i also said that he had contravened his work permit.

“In the last two years, I have deported more than 40 people of this (Aydin’s) kind,” Matiang’i said.

“Many foreigners facing deportation are arraigned at the Milimani Law Courts on a daily basis,” says Paul Ogemba, a court reporter with The Standard. Our efforts to obtain deportation statistics from the Immigration department were futile.

But such deportations raise little public attention, given that many deportees may not command the stature that would raise eyebrows. The circumstances of their deportation, too, may not warrant scrutiny.

Owing to the claims of alleged terrorism levelled against him, Aydin would have always attracted public scrutiny.

Months before Aydin’s presence in the country would be a matter of interest, another Turkish national walked into the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters, only to emerge weeks later in Turkey.

On May 3, Selahaddin Gülen, an asylum seeker in the country, reportedly walked into the Kiambu Road-based offices, in line with a court order requiring him to do so every week.

The Turk had been arrested on October 17 last year at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport following a Red Notice Alert by Interpol from Turkey.

Gülen had just landed in the country from the United States where he is a permanent resident. Unlike Aydin who travelled to Kenya for business, Gülen was in the country seeking pleasure, arriving on a tourist visa. He had only planned to meet and finally marry his fiancée.

Back home in Turkey, Gülen was wanted for allegedly belonging to an outlawed organisation led by his uncle, Fethullah Gülen, a cleric exiled in the United States and wanted for his alleged involvement in a failed 2016 coup.

Two days after Gülen was arrested, Kenyan authorities sought to send him home to face terrorism-related charges. They first petitioned the court to have the Turk extradited and later sought deportation orders.

Gülen got reprieve in March when the court ordered Kenyan authorities to hand him his travel documents, which he had deposited with the court, and allow him to travel to the US.

Two months later, Gülen’s newly-wedded wife would report him missing after he did not return from a routine visit to the DCI offices. Weeks would pass with no news of Gülen’s whereabouts. His wife grew restless and took to social media to demand his husband’s release. She did not doubt that her husband had been abducted.

On May 31, Turkish authorities confirmed Seriyye Gülen’s fears when they released a photo of a man in a blue collared T-shirt. Handcuffed. It was her husband Selahaddin Gülen. Miles away in Ankara, Turkey, in the custody of anti-terrorism police.

Turkey would claim that their intelligence officers had captured him from a foreign country. Kenyan authorities kept mum, as they would on Aydin’s case that would unfold months later. A push by Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organisation that conducts advocacy on human rights, to seek a word from authorities in June bore no fruit.

“Kenyan authorities have a responsibility for what happens within their borders, and should investigate the possibility of complicity of its officials in this flagrant disregard for due process,” Otsieno Namwaya, East Africa director at Human Rights Watch, protested the alleged deportation.

The two cases raise more questions than answers, but they pale in comparison to the events that involved yet another Turkish national more than two decades ago.

Walking out of the Greece Embassy on February 15, 1999, Abdullah Ocalan – leader of separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party – was sure he would end up in the Netherlands.

Wanted in Turkey for terrorism-related charges, Ocalan had spent months on the run. Between October 1998 and February 1999, he had sought refuge in Syria, Russia, Italy and Kenya.

In Kenya, he would stay holed up at Greek ambassador George Costoulas’ residence in Muthaiga. His entry into the country is a matter that would rattle the government of then President Daniel arap Moi and almost dent its relationship with Greece. His exit forced Nairobi to temporarily close all its 37 foreign missions after attacks on several.

At 11:33am on February 2, 1999, Ocalan arrived in the country from Milan aboard a private jet in the company of four individuals under assumed names.

Kenya’s intelligence had suspected that the Greece ambassador had offered shelter to the wanted man, but Costoulas denied such claims when asked by then Foreign minister Bonaya Godana.

“It is no longer possible to trust the ambassador as serious doubts about his credibility have been created,” Godana said upon finding out that Costoulas had lied.

The Moi-era minister would later successfully have Greece recall its ambassador. It would later emerge that Ocalan “simply walked through”, as Godana would say, as his travel documents were never checked.

When he met members of the National Assembly’s Security and Administration committee on Friday, Matiang’i seemingly alluded to history repeating itself in Aydin’s case.

“Two times he (Aydin) had sneaked into the country,” said Matiang’i, referring to the fact that the Turk’s passport had not been stamped when he entered Kenya on two separate occasions.

The embarrassment of Ocalan’s entry would not go unnoticed, with President Moi sacking the then police commissioner Duncan Wachira, DCI boss Noah arap Too and principal immigration officer Frank Kwinga.

Hated by the Turkish government, Ocalan was adored by Kurds fighting to gain independence. Kenyans would find this out when pictures of him, blindfolded and in handcuffs, spread across international media.

And almost instantly, a man who was only introduced to Kenyans on a Monday evening in February 1999 would be the subject on their lips.

Reports from various quarters accused Kenyan intelligence officers of abducting Ocalan on his way to Turkey, even as Ankara claimed responsibility for the “heroic” abduction.

Spontaneous protests across European cities erupted, targeting Kenyan and Greek missions. Ocalan was charged and convicted to death, a sentence that was commuted to life imprisonment when Turkey abolished death penalty.

Seven years after Ocalan stormed the front pages of Kenya’s leading newspapers, two Armenian brothers would join the list of controversial foreigners.

Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargsyan, known better as the Artur brothers, jumped to the scene in the wake of a raid in 2006 of Standard Group offices.

It was former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, then Lang’ata MP, who announced their entry, saying that mercenaries would be jetting into the country.

For weeks on end, the Artur brothers would leave mouths gaping with their actions that seemingly had the backing of the State.

They would brandish pistols in public and had VIP security passes to restricted areas of the JKIA. At one point, Margaryan dared Police Commissioner Major General Hussein Ali to arrest them.

Unable to contain the embarrassment that the brothers had caused, the government would, according to a parliamentary report, stage-manage their deportation. But the two wouldn’t go quietly, refusing to have their luggage checked by immigration officials.

Since then, there have been more cases of foreigners being deported from the country. There was Anthony Chinedu, the Nigerian businessman and suspected drug lord who was deported in 2013. Then came the ejection of famous Congolese musician Koffi Olomide after an airport incident in 2016 where he kicked one of his female dancers. Later, racist Liu Jiaqi, who directed his racist slurs to, among others, President Uhuru Kenyatta, was kicked out of the country.

But none of these incidents came close to matching that of lawyer Miguna Miguna, ejected twice from the country in 2018 over his alleged involvement in Raila’s mock swearing-in ceremony.

Miguna had been arrested at his Runda home, spent days in police custody and later arraigned at a Kajiado court. But the case was never to be as the lawyer left before it began. The lawyer remains in Canada despite court orders directing the Government to facilitate his return.

Miguna’s case was eerily similar to another involving Khalid Balala, who was deported four times between 1994 and 1997. Unlike Miguna, who is also a citizen of Canada, the former head of the Islamic Party of Kenya was left stateless after the government revoked his citizenship following allegations of treason.

Balala, alleged by the State to be a Yemeni, found refuge in Germany. He returned to Kenya in 1997 owing to international pressure and was detained until 2000. A court directed the government to pay him Sh6 million for violating his rights by deporting him.

The Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act, 2011 defines deportation as “the action or procedure aimed at causing an illegal foreign national to leave the country either voluntarily or compulsorily”.

It gives Interior minister express powers to deport foreigners, but immigration expert George Wajackoyah contends this would have held in the “old regime”.

According to Prof Wajackoyah, any person legally in the country but facing deportation deserves notification of the planned deportation. This is so that they can challenge the notice.

“A person legally in the country cannot be deported without a fair hearing, and that is in line with international law standards, to which Kenya is a party. Persons who entered the country illegally and those without proper documentation are amenable to deportation,” said Wajackoyah.

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