Police arrest six terror suspects linked to killing of community leaders in Kwale

Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet

Police arrested six terror suspects Tuesday night in an ongoing operation in Kwale County.

According to police, the suspects are part of a larger gang in the area that has been linked to killing local community leaders leading in the fight against radicalisation.

Police say the six evaded a dragnet on Monday where two suspects were killed and four arrested in the same area. The operation was staged after four community leaders who have been leading in a deradicalisation programme were lynched by unknown people early this month.

Police say there is a cell operating in the area opposed to the programme of reintegrating a number of youth who have returned from Somalia’s Al-Shabaab terror group.

Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet said the operation would continue to ensure the group is wiped out.

“They have been targeting those trying to reintegrate the returnees by killing them. We will not allow that as a democratic country,” said Boinnet.

More than 200 youths, majority of them from Coastal region have returned from Somalia where they had joined the terror group. Most of them came back after realizing conditions there were bad and inhabitable.

Meanwhile, one of the Kenyans who were beheaded by Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia for spying was a university graduate.

Jared Mokaya Omambia alias Abdulaziz, 30 was an Information Technology graduate of Moi University class of 2013.

Omambia and Abdul Majid Faraj 22, were beheaded because Al-Shabaab suspected they were spying for Kenyan security agencies.

A police profile report of Omambia shows he was born in Cheptiret, Uasin Gishu County but grew up in Kitale, Trans Nzoia County

“After he finished his secondary education, he travelled to Isebania in Migori County in an attempt to find a teaching job with his form four certificates. It is suspected that it is in Isebania that Jared was introduced to Islam and later converted to the religion and changed his name to Abdulaziz,” says part of the report.

The report adds that while in Isebania he was closely associated with a cell that was involved in recruitment of youth from the area and Tanzania into Al-Shabaab and the exposure to Islam continued after he left Isebania to join university.

He continued to frequent Isebania where he could tell his parents he had gone to visit a relative who is a pastor.

He started to castigate locals who previously had good relationship referring to them as “kaffir”, which is a derogatory term for non-believers.

Those offended reported him to police and he was charged at Kehancha Court in Isebania before he was released on a bond of Sh10, 000 and ordered to report to Isebania Police Station once a month.

“He reported twice to the police and then disappeared around June 2014 and is suspected to have travelled to Somalia to join Al-Shabaab.”

He reappeared on November 20, 2015 when he was sighted near Sirikwa Hotel in Eldoret.

Police say he last communicated to the parents on August 21, 2015 claiming that he was in Tanzania only for them to learn that the number was a Somali one.

“It is not clear why Jared could have been killed by Al Shabaab but it is likely that he could have been disillusioned by what he found in Somalia and may have attempted to come back home. In addition his arrest by the ATPU could also have fuelled this suspicion. This reason alone has had many Kenyans imprisoned in Al Shabaab cells and others killed.”

The report adds Faraj was born in Saudi Arabia in 1994 but grew up in Mombasa where he was radicalized by the late cleric Aboud Rogo.

In January 2011, his parents reported to the police that their son, then aged 16, had gone missing after traveling to Mogadishu where he trained as a suicide bomber.

“Al-Shabaab discovered him when he was on his way to Hagadera and arrested him. He was taken to an Al-Shabaab prison in Kismayu where he was held for about one month. He was released upon the intervention of an Al-Shabaab operative who was a neighbour in Old Town Mombasa who vouched for him telling Al-Shabaab that he was not a spy but merely homesick,” says the report.

Later on, an Al-Shabaab indoctrinator counseled him and appealed to stay in Somalia but he declined before he travelled to Garissa from Kismayu.

He was arrested in Eastleigh in April 2012.

But because he was a minor, he was released to his family, only to go missing again.

“His arrest and subsequent release from police custody made the Al-Shabaab believe that he was working for the government,” adds the report.

Others killed in Somalia include Abu Mansour Al Amriki, aka Omar Shafik Hamam, in 2013. He was executed alongside Usama Al Biritani, a Pakistani national, on accusations of spying for the United States.