Girl escapes from jaws of ‘ISIS agent’

What you need to know:

  • The girl was abducted by two men in Taita Taveta County.
  • She is fighting for her life at the Kijabe Mission Hospital.

A 16-year-old Form Two student is fighting for her life at the Kijabe Mission Hospital after she daringly jumped from fourth floor of a hotel in Eastleigh, Nairobi where she had been detained by a suspected Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) agent.

The girl, whose name we have withheld to protect her dignity, was abducted by two men in Taita Taveta County as she left Tala Secondary School where she studies and on arrival in Nairobi, she was handed to a different man.

The man, who is now in custody at the Pangani Police Station, is alleged to have locked the girl in a hotel room.

Residents of Eastleigh who found the girl writhing in pain on the ground at 4am on May 19 said she was bleeding from her legs, her nose and hands and that she had a wound on her head.

“I was going to the mosque on 6th street when I saw a crowd outside the Al Furqan Hotel. When I arrived there, I saw the girl on the ground, wailing in pain. She was also bleeding,” Mr Adan Hussein recounted.

“Police officers at the scene asked for her parents’ contacts and called them. They then interrogated the hotel’s staff and arrested the man who had been keeping the girl in the facility,” Mr Hussein added.

The hotel’s staff said that the man lied the girl was his sister and that she had arrived from their rural home.

“She did not look disturbed when she arrived at the hotel, but after a day, we kept seeing her at the balcony of the room,” an employee of the hotel said.

The suspect is set to appear in court on Monday to answer to several charges including rape and abduction. The girl was taken to theatre on Friday for an operation.

The incident follows another in which two families in South C, Nairobi are looking for their daughters who are said to have travelled to Syria to join the militant group ISIS.