BLANTYRE,
Malawi, June 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Around 200
Malawians demonstrated Friday, June 27, protesting the deportation of
five foreigners, suspected of links to Al-Qaeda, despite a High Court
order compelling the government to charge them or release them on bail.
Malawi
police fired tear gas to disperse the angry protestors but they quickly
regrouped and vandalized the offices of the Muslim Association of Malawi
(MAM), Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The
five, including two Turks, a Kenyan, a Saudi and a Sudanese, had been
involved in running businesses in Malawi and teaching in Islamic
schools.
They
were arrested last weekend in a joint operation by Malawi's National
Intelligence Bureau and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
They
demonstrators accused the government of sacrificing its sovereignty by
bowing to American pressure to have the five deported from the country.
They
also lambasted MAM over failure to protect fellow Muslims in a country
that several influential government members, including President Bakili
Muluzi himself, are Muslims.
The
angry protestors smashed windows, burnt computers and furniture,
vandalized motor vehicles and torched two motorcycles outside the
offices, an information official at the association, Saidi Jambo, told
AFP after the incident, adding that there had been no injuries.
He
told BBC News Online that irate Muslims demanded to see
the association chairman, Sheik Omar Wochi.
"But
Sheik Wochi was not in the office and this angered them," Jambo
said. "We watched helplessly as they decided to vent their anger on
the offices."
Police
who arrived after the incident only managed to arrest two suspects.
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|
A
file photo of Fahad al-Bahli, a Saudi, one of the five suspects
handed over to U.S.
|
MAM
Secretary General Ronald Mangani dismissed the charges, saying every
effort had been made to prevent the deportation of the five suspects.
"We
collaborated with the families in hiring lawyers. I personally searched
all police cells in the morning after we learnt of their arrest,"
Mangani told AFP in an interview.
"What
else could we do?"
Despite
an injunction blocking the deportation, Malawi authorities handed the
suspects over to the Americans, who spirited them away on a chartered
Air Malawi flight on Monday night, June 23, to an American army camp in
Botswana.
However,
the current whereabouts of the five is not known, according to the BBC.
But
lawyer Shabir Latif, who is leading a five-man team defending the
suspects, told the High Court in Blantyre that the Americans wanted to
take them to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where suspected al-Qaeda members
are held.
Intelligence
sources say the five Muslims have been on the CIA watch list on
suspicion that they were using their organizations to funnel money to
fund al-Qaeda operations in Africa and beyond.
