DPP, police on the spot over terror suspects

By Willis Oketch and Paul Gitau

KENYA: When wanted Belgian terror suspects Hassan Kafi and his Tunisian counterpart Mohamed Derbali were arrested in Lamu, they were transported to Mombasa and charged with terrorism and illegal entry into Kenya.

Terror charges were dropped after prosecution claimed it did not have adequate evidence to convict them and were sentenced to six months in jail on the other count.

The  victims, now held at Shimo la Tewa prison were sentenced to serve a year jail term in Kenya and like Kafi, were not slapped with terror charges despite a report by Interpol implicating them in global terrorism claims based on court-authorised telephone wiretaps on Rachid’s wife and Rachid himself.

The Interpol report brought to court by Belgium authorities seeks to show that Kafi and his colleagues had links to the Al Qaida and Al Shabaab and had left Belgium to wage jihad in Somalia and used Kenyan hideouts to raise money and stage propaganda for the terrorist groups.

Last year, when the police sought direction from the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) on Kafi’s stay in Kenya after his conviction for illegal entry, the DPP’s representative Jacob Ondari accused police of squandering an opportunity to get actionable information from the Belgium and Tunisian embassies that could have sustained terror charges against them.

“It may be that Kafi and Derbali were upto some mischief but that is mere speculation. There is not an iota of evidence as to what criminal activity they were trying to engage in,” said Ondari, in a letter to Coast PCIO Ambrose Munyasia on June last year.

He said the only evidence available was the one linking them to illegal entry into Kenya and accused police of not seeking foreign help to sustain other charges.

He argued that foreign help could have disclosed additional evidence but it is not clear why the DPP’s office did not seek this help itself.

It is also not clear if the two suspects had actually been deported by the time Ondari was writing his letter given that they were convicted on May 3 to serve 6 months.

It is also not clear whether police and the DPP tried to seek Belgian, Tunisian or Interpol’s help before the lapse of the two suspect’s sentences.