Spontaneous Trip to Somalia Leads to Three-Nation Ordeal for Swedish Couple

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 04.23.07 | 9:30 AM ET

Saifa Benaouda’s decision to travel to Mogadishu, Somalia last December blended “naïveté and a love of travel,” according to the New York Times. Her mother has stronger words to describe her actions. During a vacation to Dubai, the 17-year-old Swedish high-school student (her late-father was Moroccan) and her 25-year-old boyfriend Munir Awad (a Swedish citizen of Lebanese origin) agreed it wasn’t to their liking, so on the spur of the moment they decided to head to Somalia. Their timing was awful.

Raymond Bonner writes in the Times:

They arrived in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, just as Muslims from various countries, some trained by Al Qaeda, were streaming into Somalia in response to a call from Islamist forces that controlled much of the country last year. The Islamists were briefly battling with Ethiopian troops who had intervened to take back Somalia for a weak Western-backed interim government.

Ms. Benaouda (pronounced ben-OW-da), a Muslim, disavows any political or religious motive for her venture into Somalia, and says her boyfriend is also not political. She contends that they learned of the fighting only after they got to Mogadishu and found a country she did not like and more adventure than she wanted.

The couple fled toward Kenya and were eventually separated. Benaouda was blindfolded and flown to Nairobi, and eventually deported to Ethiopia, before human rights organizations helped secure her release in late March. Her mother, Helena, said, “She’s crazy, but I love her.”

Awad, according to Bonner, is still being held in Ethiopia.