Somalia’s Deputy Prime Minister Using Kenyan Passport Deported at JKIA

Kenya deported Somalia's Second Deputy Prime Minister Jibril Abdirashid Haji after he was found in possession of a Kenyan passport.

According to a police report filed on Friday, June 26, Haji refused to hand over a Kenyan passport he was found in possession of, raising suspicion that it had been fraudulently acquired.

He was also in possession of a Somali Diplomatic passport, which he had used to acquire a visa to enter the country.

"When interrogated, he admitted, and when asked to produce the passport, ​he declined to surrender it and claimed ​that he can only produce it in a court ‌of ⁠law," the police report read in part.

Consequently, the Second Deputy Prime Minister was held at the VIP lounge at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport before he was ordered to return to Somalia.

Haji left the country on the next flight headed to Mogadishu. Neither the Kenyan nor the Somali government have issued statements on the incident.

The Kenyan local authorities and officials in the immigration department have launched an investigation into how the Somali official acquired the passport.

The incident comes against the backdrop of a rising concern about how foreign nationals illegally accessed valid Kenyan documents, including national identification cards and passports.

A local newspaper had published a report alleging the existence of a network through which foreign nationals from Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda and other neighbouring countries are obtaining Kenyan identification documents for as little as Ksh15,000. 

The report raised concerns about national security and the potential impact of such documents on future elections.

However, Belgut MP Nelson Koech has claimed that identity cards alleged to have been acquired irregularly by foreign nationals were issued during the administration of former President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Koech said investigations into the identification cards in question showed that they had been issued in 2022, when former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i was in office.

"We looked into the Identification Cards that were claimed to be illegally acquired. These IDs were issued in 2022 when Fred Matiang'i was the Cabinet Secretary and Uhuru Kenyatta was president," he said.