NAIROBI COUNTY: Officials of a major mosque in Nairobi that has been alleged to have links with the Al Shabaab rebel group in Somalia have called on the Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo to officially clear their names from the grave allegations hanging over them.
The Management Committee of the Pumwani Riadha Mosque in Majengo area said Tuesday that it is three years since the police launched investigations into the mosque’s alleged recruitment and financing of Al Shabaab militants but not results have been released as yet.
Vice Chair of the Committee Ali AbdulMajid said that if the police have found them to have no links with criminal groups, they should officially clear their name to remove the dark clouds of suspicions that are still hanging over them
“We deserve to get the truth; we deserve justice; we deserve the dignity and a life free of shadows and stigma that the allegations have brought on us. We are tax-paying, law abiding citizens who deserve protection and respect like any other law-abiding, tax-paying Kenyan citizens,” he appealed.
He added: “We continue to suffer bias and stigma in our own country. Please come out and do what you swore to do in the Constitution; to uphold the truth, justice, freedom and peace for all Kenyans. We believe that you will rise above the conspiracy theories against us.”
The probe was announced three years ago by former police commissioner Matthew Iteere after a report accused the mosque’s officials of having links with Al Shabaab by raising funds and recruiting youths to join them in Somalia.
Mr Abdulmajid said that they are keen to clear their names since the rumours hanging over the mosque and its officials continues to put them in bad public light and made life difficult for residents of Nairobi's Majengo area who benefit from the projects sponsored by the mosque.
The mosque is currently struggling to finalise construction and sustain various key projects in the low-income community. The projects run by the Mosque include a community nursery school, a clinic offering subsidised healthcare to residents, an Islamic religious school (madrassa) as well initiatives to take care of vulnerable members of the community including orphans and the old among others projects. They also finance health insurance for community members.
“Due to the baseless claims against us, the world sees us as very bad people who are financing the Al Shabaab outlawed group. No one is willing to make contributions to our projects. We need the police and the government to officially declare us innocent,” he said.
Last year, Abdulmajid wrote to Kimaiyo asking him to make public the results of the police investigations, but nothing was forthcoming. On various occasions, the mosque’s Administrators have distanced themselves from the outlawed Al Shabaab group terming the accusations as wild, baseless and malicious.
The report by the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea had made the allegations but Abdulmajid insisted that none of the mosque officials had been given an opportunity to defend themselves from those malicious rumours.
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