NAIROBI: A United Nations report has documented claims that the last grand coalition government recruited a criminal, now jailed in Belgium, for sea piracy and money laundering to assist it negotiate with pirates who seized the Mv Faina ship with 33 T-72 tanks imported from Ukraine off the Somalia coast on September 25, 2008.
Mohamed Abdullahi Moalim Aden alias Tiiceey is the name of the felon Kenya allegedly relied on to negotiate the release of its weapons from pirates. He was jailed last year in Belgium for allegedly supporting sea piracy himself.
He was arrested together with his alleged accomplice Mohamed Abdi Hassan alias Afweyne on arrival in Belgium in 2013, according to a report of the UN Security Council. According to the report, Tiiceey was 42 years old last October and holds US nationality after emigrating there at the age of 22.
During the Mv Faina crisis, Kenyan authorities alleged the tanks were imported for the Kenyan military but foreign media alleged the Kenyans imported them for the government of South Sudan.
A parliamentary report four years ago showed that not all the tanks could be accounted for within Kenya’s military sites.
Safe passage
When the pirates released the cargo in 2009, Kenyan authorities denied paying ransom. But now a UN report suggests that not only was ransom paid but the Kenyan government relied on a network of criminals, with links to Somalia’s current government, to negotiate for the safe passage of the weapons.
Tiiceey’s exact role in the negotiations is described here as “facilitation” and his interest in negotiating for the release of the tanks is not understood but the report declare that “Tiiceey’s facilitation services are neither free nor cheap”.
Before his arrest in 2013 and imprisonment in Belgium last year, Tiiceey swindled governments and distraught families as a negotiator.
The UN report alleges for the first time Tiiceey was actively engaged with Kenya’s intelligence services and an official of the Kenya government using the pseudonym Major Yahya.
The report prepared by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea shows that Kenyan authorities allowed Tiiceey to negotiate with the pirates in Somalia for a hefty fee and he was later allowed a free reign and stay in Nairobi from where he made billions of shillings, opened bank accounts and operated an airline that still operates from Wilson Airport.
Tiiceey and brokers from Somalia living in Nairobi made billions from other ransom negotiations to free Western hostages including British Judith Tebbut who was snatched from a hotel in Lamu with her husband, David Tebbut who was killed in the hijack process on September 11, 2011.
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