Britons deported from Somalia held under Terrorism Act

Mark Bridge and agencies

Four Britons detained on the war-torn Somali-Kenyan border last month returned to the UK today and were immediately held under the Terrorism Act 2000, the Metropolitan Police said.

The men are suspected of fighting alongside Somalia’s Union of Islamic Courts movement (UIC) movement, which the US administration has linked to al-Qaeda.

The deported men, who are in their 20s and from the London area, flew from Nairobi to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where they were detained at dawn. Police have nine hours to hold them before they are arrested or released.

The men were seized in Kenya in January after escaping advancing Ethiopian forces who, together with Somali government troops, ousted the Islamic militants from de facto power. According to officials, at least 10 foreigners were held in Kenyan custody, including the Britons, two Americans, a Frenchman and a Tunisian woman.

Somalia has been in the grip of a violent power struggle between the Islamic extremists – who controlled much of the country until December – and resurgent government forces, backed by Ethiopian troops.

Last month, there were reports that Britons had been fighting alongside the Islamic forces, with some killed, injured or captured. Somalia’s deputy prime minister also claimed that some financial support for the Islamic militant movement in his country was coming from the UK.

Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia, a largely Muslim country, in December to prevent the Islamic movement from dislodging the weak, internationally recognised government from its last stronghold in the west of the country. Washington accused the fundamentalist Islamic Courts Union of sheltering al-Qaeda leaders and targeted "high value" militants in airstrikes.

The capital, Mogadishu, fell to government and Ethiopian troops on December 28, after seven months under the control of the Union, which advocates a strict interpretation of Sharia law and has been likened to Afghanistan’s Taleban.

Leaders of the Islamic movement have vowed to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war in Somalia, and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has called on militants to carry out suicide attacks on the Ethiopian troops.

For weeks now, unknown gunmen have fired mortars and rockets on government buildings and areas where Ethiopian troops are based in Mogadishu in near-nightly attacks.

Today, the Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told journalists in Nairobi: “We believe [the leaders of the ousted Islamic movement] are not innocent. One day or another they will be brought to justice.”