The Somalis government has criticized Kenya for its act of deporting two Somali lawmakers and a minister after authorities in Nairobi blocked their entry into the country.
Earlier this week, Senators Ilyas Ali and Zamzam Dahir and minister Osman Liban were forced to spend hours at Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) before being returned to Somalia on Tuesday. Immigration officers at the airport advised the three diplomatic passport holders to obtain visas at the Kenyan Embassy in Mogadishu before the clearance.
Somalia’s ministry of foreign affairs has protested their detention and deportation in an official letter obtained exclusively by Reuters.
“Somalia is concerned that several members of the Somali government … were detained by immigration officials, their passports confiscated, forcing them to return to Mogadishu,” the letter read.
In the letter, the ministry added that the actions risked hurting relations between the two countries and asked Kenya to consider the potentially destabilizing impact of these actions and to uphold diplomatic norms in the spirit of reciprocity and mutual respect.
Kenya’s cabinet secretary for foreign affairs, Monica Juma, on Tuesday declined to comment on the matter but said visitors with valid visas would not be allowed to enter the country.
“I’d be very surprised if anybody was turned away with a visa,” Juma said.
The relations between Mogadishu and Nairobi got strained earlier this year after Somalia decided to auction off oil and gas blocks in a disputed maritime area. A disputed triangle of water stretches over an area of more than 100,000 square kilometres (40,000 square miles). The area in question is believed to hold valuable deposits of oil and gas in a part of Africa only recently found to be sitting on significant reserves.
Kenya recalled its ambassador from Mogadishu in February in the row over which of the east African neighbors controls access to the lucrative deposits.
