Families recount how relatives vanished

He was a charming teenager with an outstanding ability to master practical skills in his father's garage - until the scourge of enforced disappearance befell him. 

It is 11 months since Hosni Mbaraka was captured in broad daylight from a mosque where he had gone for lunchtime prayers in the company of his siblings in Mombasa. 

"You don't know what I'm feeling right now. My heart is leaking; we have been subjected to untold psychological torture."

These are the words of Mbarak Khalid, expressing the pain and anguish his family has endured since his second born son Hosni was abducted on May 25 last year.

Khalid works at a workshop near the Sapphires hotel in Mombasa. He was training his son, a Class Eight drop out, to be a mechanic like him.

Speaking to the Star, Khalid recounted how his 18-year-old son was captured by five armed men who introduced themselves as police as his other two children watched helplessly. 

"The four men threatened to shoot anybody who dared raise alarm or take a photograph of what happened," he said.

The abductors tied the young man before bundling him into a waiting white Toyota Fielder registration number KCP 254W.

The father of eight said he has been from one police station to another in search of his son, even having to file a habeas corpus application with the help of civil rights organisation HAKI Africa, to no avail. 

"The courts ordered the police to produce him dead or alive but they deny they know nothing of his whereabouts. I approached the county commander the same day he was abducted but he told me that Hosni's phone signals were being detected in Malindi. At 11pm the same day, the signals could not be traced," Khalid said.

"It is better to know that your son is dead and you can see his grave than not knowing anything about it. It is really painful. We live in extreme anxiety. If they do not know what happened to my son, who knows? If he is linked to any crime including terrorism, why not charge him in court?" 

A similar tale was told by Saida Juma Suleiman, 35, whose husband and father of her three daughters got arrested five years ago never to return. 

Speaking to the Star, Saida said February 2, 2014, was a normal day, as the love of her life, Shemed Salim Ahmed, 42, set out for his daily job. 

"The next time I saw him was on 7pm television news, being arrested at Masjid Musa mosque," she said.

The wife said Ahmed, a mechanic, was out to work for a client near the mosque and went at the sanctuary for the lunchtime prayers then got arrested. 

"My firstborn daughter Marriam,17, had to drop out of school. The second-born taken up by my brother living in Tanzania. I'm only living with my last-born. Life has been really hard for me," she recounted.

It would be better, she said, if she knew her husband was dead than living with anxiety.

The police deny ever arresting anyone fitting the description of Ahmed. 

"I wonder why they deny yet the arrest of my husband was broadcast all over," she said. 

Coast-based human rights outfit Haki Africa says it has recorded 32 cases of enforced disappearance last year alone.