Two Bahamas citizens are a decision by a senior immigration officer at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) to confiscate their passport and ordering them to return to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where their flight originated from.
The duo, Kafilongo Botulu Tresor and Mbunda Tshombe Samy were born in Zaire, now DRC in 1986 and 1982 respectively before acquiring citizenship in Bahamas where they moved at an early age.
On Monday, February 21, they were on their way to Paris, France from Kinsasha aboard a Kenya Airways flight which left DRC at 10am and arrived at JKIA at 3pm. With their next connection flight set to depart at 11pm to Paris where they were to get means to Bahamas, they decided to take transit visa to have a short glimpse of Nairobi which they have never visited before, before they returned to catch their evening flight.
“We are shocked with what we have witnessed tonight. This immigration officer at JKIA by the name Ruth Djiraha has confiscated our passports without a reason and forced us to miss our flight to Paris, France. No she wants us to take a flight back to DRC, the origin of our trip, without our passports,” said a furious Tresor who gave his physical address in Bahamas as Walrus Avenue n17, Nassau/ Bahamas.
He added: “She claimed that our passports were fake and demanded 5,000 Euros from us, when we could not raise that amount of money and offered her 2,000 Euros, our flight had already left. She took the money and knowing that she had already wronged us, told us that she would offer us accommodation and organise our return to Congo the following morning. If indeed our passports are fake, there are right procedures to be followed, in fact policemen could have been involved and is that even within her mandate yet our destination is France and we were just on transit?”
