BAK
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 11, 2007
- 124,789
- 288,015
:confused2:Moshi kidnap: Serious case of security lapse
By Editor
18th May 2010
The story of an eight-year old Moshi Municipality boy whose parents last week single-handedly rescued him from month-long captivity after paying 1.5m/- ransom to his kidnappers in the Ugandan capital, Kampala sounds more fiction than real. But it is real.
To those well acquainted with the operations of the Tanzanian security operatives, particularly their assertive and no-nonsense efficiency and heightened vigilance have been wondering whether such an incident could happen on the Tanzanian soil.
That this has happened boils down to one conclusion: There is a serious security lapse that must be addressed in earnest before the situation gets out of hand.
Let's revisit the scenario: Eight-year Faraja Haruna is playing along in a Moshi town street on the morning of April 18. Some strangers approach him around 10am offering to buy him banana. He follows them unsuspectingly and is whisked away to an unknown destination.
The boy's parents come back from their daily chores later in the day. Night comes and the boy is nowhere to be seen. For five days, nobody knows where the boy is and no one, even the parents, sees any sense in notifying the police on the boy's mysterious disappearance.
On the seventh day, anonymous people apparently in the Ugandan capital, Kampala phone the boy's father through an undisclosed commuter bus operator demanding that he pay them USD 1,000 so that they could release Faraja alive.
Instead of reporting the matter to the police, the father gathers family members, relatives, well-wishers and business associates and manages to collect 1.5m/-, the amount that had finally been agreed upon with the kidnappers after intensive negotiations and which had to be paid on May 12 to save the boy's life.
At this stage, the police are informed of the incident. But still, the parents travel alone all the way to Jinja, Uganda where they deposit the ransom in a Stanbic Bank account given by the kidnappers.
Then barehanded and with only a few cents in their pockets in a strange land they start tracing their missing child who is finally handed over to them at a bus station by a conductor whose name they did not have time to find, and the journey back home starts.
Assuming this is as it happened as was reported in the media, there are many questions that have to be satisfactorily answered to avoid a repeat of such incidents.
Why didn't the parents report the disappearance of the boy to the police at least within the first three days?
After the first communication from Kampala, and when money was being raised to help pay the ransom, why didn't local government leaders intervene and advise on the right course? Where were the highly acclaimed community police? Couldn't a vigilant police force intervene at this stage?
Even after the police were notified, how come the parents travelled to Uganda alone without under-cover detectives?
Why did it take so long to notify Interpol who would have co-operated with the Tanzanian detectives to nab the culprits?
These and many other questions demand answers which must be answered if Tanzanians are to be assured of their security.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
By Editor
18th May 2010
The story of an eight-year old Moshi Municipality boy whose parents last week single-handedly rescued him from month-long captivity after paying 1.5m/- ransom to his kidnappers in the Ugandan capital, Kampala sounds more fiction than real. But it is real.
To those well acquainted with the operations of the Tanzanian security operatives, particularly their assertive and no-nonsense efficiency and heightened vigilance have been wondering whether such an incident could happen on the Tanzanian soil.
That this has happened boils down to one conclusion: There is a serious security lapse that must be addressed in earnest before the situation gets out of hand.
Let's revisit the scenario: Eight-year Faraja Haruna is playing along in a Moshi town street on the morning of April 18. Some strangers approach him around 10am offering to buy him banana. He follows them unsuspectingly and is whisked away to an unknown destination.
The boy's parents come back from their daily chores later in the day. Night comes and the boy is nowhere to be seen. For five days, nobody knows where the boy is and no one, even the parents, sees any sense in notifying the police on the boy's mysterious disappearance.
On the seventh day, anonymous people apparently in the Ugandan capital, Kampala phone the boy's father through an undisclosed commuter bus operator demanding that he pay them USD 1,000 so that they could release Faraja alive.
Instead of reporting the matter to the police, the father gathers family members, relatives, well-wishers and business associates and manages to collect 1.5m/-, the amount that had finally been agreed upon with the kidnappers after intensive negotiations and which had to be paid on May 12 to save the boy's life.
At this stage, the police are informed of the incident. But still, the parents travel alone all the way to Jinja, Uganda where they deposit the ransom in a Stanbic Bank account given by the kidnappers.
Then barehanded and with only a few cents in their pockets in a strange land they start tracing their missing child who is finally handed over to them at a bus station by a conductor whose name they did not have time to find, and the journey back home starts.
Assuming this is as it happened as was reported in the media, there are many questions that have to be satisfactorily answered to avoid a repeat of such incidents.
Why didn't the parents report the disappearance of the boy to the police at least within the first three days?
After the first communication from Kampala, and when money was being raised to help pay the ransom, why didn't local government leaders intervene and advise on the right course? Where were the highly acclaimed community police? Couldn't a vigilant police force intervene at this stage?
Even after the police were notified, how come the parents travelled to Uganda alone without under-cover detectives?
Why did it take so long to notify Interpol who would have co-operated with the Tanzanian detectives to nab the culprits?
These and many other questions demand answers which must be answered if Tanzanians are to be assured of their security.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
