Somalia deputy PM deported from Kenya amid border weapons smuggling and passport fraud charges
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya deported Somalia’s Second Deputy Prime Minister and former acting President of South West State, Jibril Abdirashid Haji, on June 25 after a tense confrontation at Nairobi’s main airport over suspected passport fraud and claims that he was threatening regional security, according to official police reports released Friday.
The move, rare for a senior foreign official, came against a backdrop of intelligence warnings linking the Somali politician to efforts aimed at destabilizing strategic towns along the Kenya-Somalia border, a corridor long vulnerable to cross-border insecurity.
Airport Interrogation and Passport Seizure
Haji arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on Wednesday afternoon aboard a Saacid Airlines flight from Mogadishu, carrying a valid Somali diplomatic passport and entry visa. But immigration officers detained him after intelligence pointed to his connection with an illegally obtained Kenyan passport.
In a Kenyan police incident report filed at the JKIA station, Haji reportedly acknowledged having the Kenyan travel document during questioning, but refused to hand it over to border officials.
“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 official Kenyan police report stated.
After the standoff, Haji spent the night under guard in the VIP lounge of Terminal 2 before being put on a Daallo Airlines flight back to Mogadishu early Thursday morning.
Weapons Airlift and Border Militia Claims
Security sources say the passport case was only part of the picture. The deportation was expedited, they say, because of troubling intelligence suggesting the Deputy Prime Minister was involved in arming clan militias in towns along the Kenyan frontier.
According to the intelligence briefs, Haji had recently supervised the airlifting of weapons into a key border town. Investigators believe his stop in Nairobi was linked to a planned trip to the border, where he was expected to distribute the weapons and disrupt the current local administration — a development Kenyan security agencies warned could have serious spillover effects for domestic security.
Baidoa Violence and Political Fallback
The allegations have also intensified scrutiny of Haji’s political role in Somalia. He has recently been linked to violence in Baidoa, the interim capital of South West State, where deadly clashes left civilians dead and forced hundreds of families from their homes.
As the airport standoff played out, several Kenyan politicians sympathetic to Haji reportedly tried to press senior security officials to allow him into the country. Those efforts were rejected by immigration and counter-terrorism officers, who cited the national security threat.
Neither Somalia’s federal government nor Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a formal diplomatic statement on the deportation. Local sources say digital evidence and screenshots related to the illegal renewal of the official’s Kenyan passport are already circulating within regional intelligence networks.
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