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UGANDA: DEPORTED CANADIAN JOURNALIST STRANDED IN KENYA’S CAPITAL March 12, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) A Canadian journalist, who is a Ugandan correspondent for the international news magazine, The Economist is stranded in the transit zone of Jommo Kenyatta airport. Daily Monitor reports.
Mr. Blake Lambert, who was crudely deported from Uganda on Thursday evening, is reported to be spending 28 hours languishing in Nairobi after the Kenyan government denied him entry.
Mr. Lambert who fell out with Uganda over his reporting arrived at Nairobi airport, only to be told he is not allowed to enter the city because of his status as a persona non grata in an East African country.
"I am stuck here because the Kenyan authorities say I am inadmissible," Lambert told Daily Monitor on phone from Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta airport. He will have spent a total of 28 hours trapped at the airport before he gets a flight to Toronto, Canada.
“I paid a security bond of US$ 902 and the assumption I made was it entitled me to a return fare but what I instead got was a ticket to Nairobi. I think the Ugandan government just wanted to wash their hands off me and I have learnt that it is very hard to step off a transit flight as a persona non grata" Lambert added.
According to reports, Lambert was deported without being served any official letter explaining the reasons for his deportation. On Thursday evening Lambert jetted into Entebbe airport from a short holiday in South Africa only to be shoved into an isolation room at the airport.
"Some guy camein with a visitors' pass. He looked like a security agent and kept saying there was no problem. They then stamped my passport with a big X in red. They never told me why they were putting me back on the plane. I asked them but they did not answer," Lambert told Daily Monitor. But Internal Affairs Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda says Lambert's presence here is a threat to the security of the Republic of Uganda.
A few months ago, the government Media Center refused to renew Lambert’s accreditation. The center run by Mr. Robert Kabushenga also trimmed the accreditation of BBC's Will Ross from one year to four months for the same reasons. Kabushenga wrote to the Media Council, which grants accreditation, to say Mr. Lambert's work was biased, false and "prejudicial" to Uganda's foreign interest. He accused Lambert of echoing the views of opposition politicians.