Five years later as the rebel war raged, the health of Hinda’s husband began to deteriorate. There was no access to medical centres in the rural countryside and if they ventured into the towns or cities for treatment, they risked getting arrested by the Ethiopian government.
That’s when Hinda and her husband made the decision to travel to Hargeisa in northwest Somalia. As the couple got settled there, things began to change for the worse, Hinda reveals.
“During one night, my husband received a call … After the call came to an end, my husband informed me that a relative we both knew called.
“I immediately told him to stop talking to that man because he was suspected of being a spy working with the Ethiopian government.”
Afterwards Hinda’s husband went to sleep. The next morning he woke up complaining of head pain. In mid-afternoon, he decided to go for a walk to clear his head but he never returned, Hinda tells Al Jazeera.
Once it hit nightfall, she began to worry. The following morning, with no sight of him, she made the decision to search for him, starting at the nearby market.
“Everyone I spoke to at the market gave me the cold shoulder. Each person I asked would either walk away or give me a bad look as if my questions weren’t welcome.”
Demoralised, she eventually made her way home.
For the next 30 days, Hinda searched all over Hargeisa for her husband through intermediaries and not directly, due to the fear of being discovered as an ONLF member.
“I had a couple of individuals I trusted check the local jails and police stations for any sight of my husband. I never got the answers I was looking for.”
With a group of relatives, she went to the headquarters of the Criminal Investigative Department (CID) in Hargeisa, but officers threatened her with violence if she continued asking questions.
“That’s when one of the CID officers came forward, smirked and asked where my husband was taken from and we told him the neighbourhood and then he said, ‘We picked him up.’ “
Hinda was shocked, yet relieved to at least know who had taken her husband. When she asked where he was being held, the officer said, “He was sent out west (in reference to Ethiopia).”
“That’s when I knew he’d been renditioned,” Hinda tells Al Jazeera, recalling her devastation at the news.
@Garaad Awal read this apparently ex ONLF fighters were hunted in Hargeisa and deported. The officer smiled in her face and said we got your husband.
He was taken to Jail Ogadeen
A couple of weeks later, Hinda got word from Ogaden that her husband had been taken to Jail Ogaden – a notorious prison in Ethiopia where a 2018 Human Rights Watch report said thousands of prisoners, many of them government critics, dissidents and civilians, had been detained for years under horrific conditions. Torture, rape and death were common.
“Once I found out my husband was in Jail Ogaden, I had to leave Hargeisa, knowing there was a chance I could risk the same fate
Seems like these people are despised everywhere. No one trusts them.
Guns are silent, but war lingers for Ogaden’s former women rebel fighters
Mogadishu, Somalia – Hinda Aden and her fellow rebel fighters were trekking through the grasslands of Ethiopia’s Ogaden region under the cover of night, to avoid the enemy’s gaze, when they saw headlights approaching in the distance.
www.hiiraan.com