Garissa residents decry increase in human trafficking cases as four students are rescued in Nairobi

Garissa residents are raising alarm over a rise in human trafficking cases following the recent rescue of four Junior Secondary students from Garissa Town who were being trafficked to Libya. The incidents have caused panic among parents, who are now appealing to security agencies to intensify surveillance on human trafficking and arrest all those involved.

Sheikh Ahmed Aden, a muezzin who calls Muslims to prayer at Khalifa Mosque in Garissa Town, managed to rescue his son from the traffickers in Nairobi.

He stated that parents in Garissa have reason to worry about this school holiday, as human traffickers are targeting young people in Junior and Senior Secondary schools as part of a trafficking network operating between Kenya and Libya.

"I was shocked when I realised my son, a Junior Secondary student in Garissa Town, had not come home to sleep, and his phone was switched off," he recounted.

According to Ahmed, the incident, which occurred on October 2, left him distressed, and his family made frantic efforts to locate his missing son. He later discovered that his son was missing along with four friends, all of whom had disappeared the same night.

Among the missing friends was a Grade 7 student in Bulla Sunna, whose parents were also searching for him.

A week later, the parents of the two students separately received calls from their children, who told them they had escaped from the traffickers and needed guidance to a location in Nairobi where they could be picked up.

Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, a guardian, explained that when his son called asking for help, they advised him to get a motorcycle and directed the rider to take him to 6th Street in Eastleigh, where relatives involved in the search were waiting for him.

Upon arrival, the shaken and scared boy narrated to his parents how he had left Garissa by bus from Mandera Town at 10 pm, along with his four friends. They were met by a man of Somali origin who identified himself as "Arab." He picked them up and took them to a location in Nairobi where they found four men and women chewing miraa and smoking shisha.

According to the boy's parents, it was the muezzin's son who had introduced him to the traffickers, who had promised them well-paying jobs in Juba, South Sudan.

However, they were all terrified by the state of the room they were taken to and the behaviour of the people they encountered, as preparations were allegedly underway to transport them to a destination they suspected to be Libya, where human traffickers reportedly torture and hold people for ransom.

The Eastleigh Voice spoke to the victim at the compound of Khalifa Mosque, where he was describing to friends the ordeal he went through after being lured into the trafficking network.

“Blessings to Allah, we were rescued. I came to know the traffickers through a WhatsApp chat group with strangers who promised me a good job in South Sudan,” he said.

“They later asked me to bring along my best friends and arranged our transport to Nairobi, but we were frightened by the people we met there. The room was small, filled with shisha smoke that was suffocating, and their conversations at night were terrifying. We all decided to escape and call for help, and thankfully, we succeeded. We are all back home now,” he explained.

Abdirizack Abdi Osman, a concerned parent in Garissa, urged other parents to be vigilant. He also appealed to security agencies to follow up on the incident, as the affected parents had reported the matter to the police in Garissa.