Trending 
A Tanzanian human rights activist, Mshabaha Mshabaha Hamza, was abducted in Kenya on Sunday but rescued before being taken across the border, Amnesty International reported on Monday.
Hamza has been a prominent critic of the violent crackdown by Tanzanian security forces on protests during the October elections, which rights groups and opposition sources say claimed around 2,000 lives amid an internet blackout.
According to Amnesty, Hamza, who has lived in exile in Kenya for approximately four years, was seized by three men and forced into a vehicle.
He resisted his captors and was later dumped “drugged and injured” at Lukenya in Machakos County, about an hour outside Nairobi.
Kenyan police intervened promptly, intercepting the vehicle carrying the alleged kidnappers — two Kenyans and a Tanzanian.
Amnesty said the suspects had been promised payment to deliver Hamza to the Kenya-Tanzania border and described the incident as “a violent, premeditated abduction and forceful rendition to Tanzania.”
Amnesty has previously warned of a “growing and worrying trend of transnational repression” in East Africa, noting cases such as the November 2024 abduction of Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye in Kenya and the January 2025 kidnapping of Tanzanian rights activist Maria Sarungi Tsehai in Nairobi, both of whom were later released following swift interventions.
Kenyan activists have also been briefly abducted in Uganda and Tanzania before being freed at the borders.
