“We have installed intensive awareness and control measures in our global dealer network to minimise the risk of potential sanctions circumvention,” a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson told Al Jazeera, explaining that such measures included audits of authorised partners.
In the years that followed, the church recruited members from different locations across the country. Juma said congregants were not from around the area, spoke different languages, and never left the compound to go to their own homes.According to Caren Kiarie, a human rights activist from neighbouring Kisumu County, the church has several branches across the Kenyan Nyanza region, and sends members from one location to the other.
Many people came to worship and live within the church full time, Opapo villagers remember.“They were very friendly people who did business around the Opapo area and interacted well with the people here,” Juma said. “But they would never live outside the church, as they all went back inside in the evening. Within the church compound, they had cattle, sheep, poultry and planted crops for their food.”Though the worshippers could interact with outsiders, locals say the children living there – some with their parents and others who neighbours said were taken in alone – never attended school, while members were barred from seeking medical care if they were sick.
On the day of the police raid and rescue, many of the worshippers looked weak and ill, said Juma, who over the years befriended some young people whose parents belonged to the church. “They were sickly, as they were never allowed to go to the hospital or even take pain medication,” he said, quoting what his neighbours had told him. Auma believes those who were rescued that day were the sickly ones, as the others had escaped.The 57 initially refused to leave the compound at all, insisting the church was their only “home”. But police took them to the nearby Rongo Sub-county Hospital to be treated. They again refused medical care and instead began singing Christian praise songs in the Dholuo language. Auma said the songs were chants asking God to save them and take them home to heaven.
Disturbed by the commotion, health workers recommended that they be moved from the hospital because they were making other patients uncomfortable. That’s when they were taken into police custody. According to the assistant county commissioner, Josphat Kingoku, the worshippers were released from police custody two weeks ago, but he did not know their whereabouts.
Seeking news about loved ones“My children were on the verge of starving. No milk, no food, not even baby formula. They cried day and night, and I had to beg neighbours for scraps,” Abu Sa’da told
While the previous United Nations-led distribution network operated about 400 sites across the Strip, the, guarded by armed private security contractors working for a US company, has set up only four “mega-sites” for Gaza’s population of about two million Palestinians.
Three of GHF’s distribution sites are in Rafah, situated within areas where the Israeli military has issued evacuation warnings. The fourth site is in Gaza City, near the boundary with Deir el-Balah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering. None of the distribution points are located north of the Netzarim Corridor.The UN and aid groups say the GHF does not abide by humanitarian principles, accusing it of weaponising aid and warning that it could serve to depopulate northern Gaza, as planned by the Israeli military.