Dadaab, Kenya – Twenty-eight-year-old Shukri Abdirashid Hussein remembers vividly the events of November 30.

Half asleep in his mud house in Dadaab’s Dagahley refugee camp near Kenya’s Somali border, Hussein awoke to commotion outside his door.

“I was awakened by the cries of neighbours, and before I knew what was going on, my door had been ripped open and three officers entered my house.”

What followed, Hussein said, was a stream of accusations. “They asked me where the gun is, before I could answer anything, they started beating me mercilessly with their guns and batons for more than an hour.”

Hussein was rushed off to the Dagahley police post where he was again beaten by authorities. He was then moved to the Ifo refugee camp police post in Dadaab where he spent three days. The conditions in the cells were horrible, he told Al Jazeera. He received one meal after 32 hours and was repeatedly hit with the butt of a gun.

After hours of mistreatment, Hussein was released after representatives of United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) requested authorities to let him receive medical attention. Even after his release, Hussein was interrogated for hours without being charged or told what crime he had committed. At the hospital, Hussein was admitted with a fractured shoulder and bruises across his back.

The worst part is up to now, nobody has told me why I was arrested in the first place and why I received such inhumane treatment from people who are there to protect my rights,” he said

Campaign of retaliation

Experiences like Hussein’s are not isolated events but linked to what many refugees see as a larger campaign of retaliation by Dadaab police. After an attack on the Dagahley market on November 29 left one officer dead and another critically wounded, police escalated operations to snuff out Somali fighters.

The Kenyan government has, on several occasions, claimed that the Dadaab refugee complex, comprised of three camps and is home to over 400,000 people, most of whom are Somalis who fled war and famine in their homeland, is used as a safe haven by Somali armed group, al-Shabab and aided by local sympathisers.

Police assert that the latest attack on officers was carried out by al-Shabab fighters who fled to Block C3. Police arrested more than 70 people in security operations after the attack.

Read more: Police abuse running rampant in Dadaab camp 

Source: Al Jazeera