Nairobi, Kenya – When Kenya's security forces knocked on the door of Abdinassir Ismail's house during a counter-terror crackdown last May, little did he know that they would ask for a bribe.
"There was a bang at the door followed by a loud command: 'Open the door,'" recalls 36-year-old Ismail.
Six policemen stood at the door and asked for his identification papers, he told Al Jazeera.
The group were part of "Operation Usalama [peace] Watch", launched to hunt down people suspected of having links to Somalia's armed group al-Shabab, which is blamed by the Kenyan government for a series of deadly attacks, including last September's siege on a mall in Nairobi that left 77 people dead.
"I showed them my refugee card [registration certificate from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR]. One of them kept interrogating me while others ransacked the house," says Ismail, who is originally from neighbouring Somalia and has lived in Kenya as a refugee for 17 years.
"The policeman alleged my refugee identity card had expired. The truth is that it was still valid. He asked for a bribe. I had 1,000 shillings, equivalent to $12."
Life turned upside down
Before the crackdown, life for Ismail in Dadaab refugee camp, one of the world's largest, and home to other refugees from Somalia, was relatively peaceful. The counter-terror crackdown turned it upside down, he says.
Ismail says that even after taking the bribe, the police arrested him, setting off a 15-day ordeal for him at what is now called Kasarani "Concentration Camp", Kenya's version of Guantanamo Bay, the US detention centre in Cuba.
I do not know how much but am certain they paid something. The last detainee was released at the gate of the police station.
- Local trader Mohamed Ahmed Kulmiye
Since April, the Kenyan government – which sent troops to Somalia in 2011 to rein in al-Shabab – has ordered all refugees in urban centres to return to camps in the north and east following a wave of terror attacks and threats across the country.
Ismail's charge of extortion against security forces has been corroborated by Amnesty International, the London-based rights group which slammed the operation, saying it was carried out in "blatant" disregard of international law and the country's constitution.
"Kenya's Somali community is being scapegoated in a counter-terror operation which has seen thousands subjected to arbitrary arrest, harassment, extortion, ill-treatment, forcible relocation, and expulsion," the group said.
Security forces have previously come under criticism over looting. The looting allegations against them started to make rounds shortly after the deadly siege on the Westgate shopping mall and have continued to haunt security forces in their counter-terror operations.
Last year, the head of the Kenyan army admitted that soldiers who fought al-Shabab at the mall had looted mobile phones, cameras and battery chargers, although he had initially insisted that they only took water from the supermarket.
But police dismiss allegations of extortion and insist the crackdown did not target the Somali community.
Masoud Mwinyi, the spokesman for the Kenyan administration police, tasked with securing government installations, said officers accused of extortion face disciplinary measures.
"People can make complaints here and there but they have to be verified … so that we can have a basis we can start from," he told Al Jazeera.
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