East Africa is now a community of repression, not cooperation

On Wednesday, May 23, 2025, Mwabili Mwagodi, a Kenyan activist living and working in Tanzania, was abducted in the capital, Dar es Salaam, under highly suspicious circumstances. According to his own account, he was approached by unidentified security agents and taken into custody without a warrant. He was blindfolded and transported to an undisclosed location. For several days, he was held incommunicado, subjected to interrogation, and most disturbingly, kept in handcuffs both day and night, even while sleeping and using the toilet. His captors offered no official charges, no access to legal representation and no information to his family or colleagues.

Eventually, and with no legal process, Mwabili was handed over to the Kenyan authorities. Traumatised and disoriented, he later revealed that when he was handed over to Kenyan authorities, they confiscated his three mobile phones, his passport, his work permit and other personal effects. He has not been able to recover them to date. No receipts were issued, no records filed. Only silence and intimidation. No government, Kenyan or Tanzanian, has publicly taken responsibility. Yet both were complicit. This illegal cross-border rendition was not the result of rogue officers; it was a coordinated action between two states determined to punish a young man for daring to speak truth to power.