By David Ochami

Mombasa, Kenya: Slain Islamic radical Sheikh Abukabar Shariff alias Makaburi may have gained notoriety and fame in equal measure for his fiery and stunningly extreme views on non-Muslims, but his curious ways hid a different man behind the bearded face.

Also, controversy followed Makaburi — who fell to gunmen’s attack under the cover of darkness — to his grave at midnight, which is a rare time for burials among Muslims.

After detaining his body for several hours at the Bamburi Police Station, his supporters took it to Masjid Musa — the mosque which bears the footprints of his fiery speeches — for prayers. This was a few minutes after midnight on Wednesday. They later buried his unwashed body at Manyimbo War Memorial Cemetery.

It was buried unwashed because, as one of his supporters told The Standard, Makaburi was considered a martyr, hence his burial in bloodstained clothes as evidence of violent death in the cause of defending the faith.

Born in Mombasa in 1963, Makaburi once had a family, but it fell apart due to his legal problems. Critics blame his wretched family life on his own recklessness, given that he was estranged even from his own siblings, many of who stringently eschew any open association with him.

One of his siblings was a happy-go-lucky disc jockey (DJ) at one of Mombasa’s nightclubs and his mother, Nuru, lives in the coastal town.

His sister, Fatuma, and mother came to his defence last year when he fell into trouble, and some of his children and former wife lived in Mombasa.

But though he lived simply, his name featured on the international terror radar largely because of his association with late Al-Qaeda kingpin in East Africa, Fazoul Abdallah and Sheikh Aboud Rogo, who incidentally also fell by the assassin bullet.

Their executions did not deter Makaburi, but he seemed to have slowed down. He insisted that they were innocent.

He may have lived a simple life, but to the international anti-terror networks he ranked high up and was probably the most watched in Kenya.

Banned

So as he walked the streets of Mombasa, few could tell that Makaburi was banned from using flights as a means of transport. As a designated terrorist, and a target of sanctions by both the United Nations Security Council and the US, he was not allowed on any plane.

Makaburi was also not allowed to leave his home area in Mombasa without notifying the police. Since December 2010, he was ordered to report to the police every Tuesday.

In July last year a UN report accused him of leading Al Hijra, the Kenya version of Al-Shabaab based in Mombasa and Nairobi. The report showed that Al Hijra had links to extremist groups in Burundi and Tanzania.

His claim to religious scholarship was dubious, despite his deep religious knowledge and grasp of Islamic jurisprudence. He was once the custodian of Masjid Musa, but never rose to become an Imam. Instead he was associated with violent attacks on Imams he disagreed with, and the takeover of their mosques.

Makaburi returned to Kenya in the 1990s after decades in Yemen, where he joined that country’s armed forces. He described himself as a gunner and explosives expert. He was mainly radicalised in Yemen.

His conversion to the more extreme doctrines of the Salafi branch of Islam that glorify violent jihad began to show when he began to desecrate graves built inside mosques in Mombasa, before spreading his crusade to Malindi and Lamu, the latter town where he traced his roots.

He considered the graves to be apostate, and part of the Sufist branch of Islam that he considered heretical. That is how he acquired the nickname Makaburi, which means “graveyard”.

Ugandan jail

The US Government designated Makaburi as a terrorist. He was one of the three Kenyans on the US Government sanctions list for alleged involvement in terror activities besides his late comrade, the late Sheikh Rogo and Omar Awadh Omar, who is currently in a Ugandan jail, accused of involvement in the 2010 World Cup bombings in Kampala.

For all his radical rhetoric, Makaburi, who had no job and lived from the proceeds of two flats in Mombasa’s Tudor Estate, all his tenants were Christians and he lived in the same housing unit with them.

He once secured employment for his mentor and ideological comrade, Rogo, when he was a custodian of Masjid Musa. This was after Rogo was acquitted over the 2002 terrorist bombing of Israeli properties in Kikambala and Mombasa.

The Government never won a case against Makaburi in court.

Makaburi was first arrested on December 21, 2010 alongside Sheikh

Rogo, days after a Kampala Coach was bombed in Nairobi. The case has never been concluded. Last week he won a Sh670,000 award  against the government and he was yet to receive the money when he was killed.

Makaburi met Rogo in late 2002 and the two stayed close for almost a decade. Makaburi said he was touched by Rogo’s preaching on jihad.

Makaburi was an avid reader who had a room in his home designated as the library. It was full of books, with his favourite subjects being history and Islam. He said that if there was something he wanted to do it was to be a history teacher.