Nairobi Bomb mastermind is shot dead

By CYRUS OMBATI

Somalia government forces in Mogadishu have killed the mastermind of the 1998 twin bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam that claimed 300 lives.

Fazul Abdullah Mohamed was killed on Wednesday by the Transitional Federal Government forces at a roadblock in the capital of the war-torn neighbouring country.

Reports indicated he was killed alongside Musa Dere, a Kenyan and a one-egged militant. Photographs of the face of one of the bodies circulated by police in Nairobi bore similarities to those issued by the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists website.

Fazul Abdullah Mohamed

The run-away terrorist, who was on the FBI watch list of most wanted terrorists, was the leader of al Qaeda’s branch in Somalia, Al-Shabaab, from where he directed attacks.

News of his death was broken by KTN during its 1pm news bulletin on Saturday. Commissioner of Police Mathew Iteere said he was working with security officers in Somalia to get a comprehensive report. "TFG forces have confirmed they gunned him down at a roadblock on Wednesday alongside another man," Iteere said, on the telephone.

Eighteen aliases

Somalia militant group Al Shaabab confirmed to the AFP news agency that Fazul was among those killed.

"One of the men killed near Mogadishu was Fazul Abdullah. He is not dead as thousands like him are still in the fight against the enemy of Allah," a senior Al Shaabab commander had earlier told AFP.

According to the FBI, Fazul used 18 aliases. Police in Nairobi circulated a photograph of Fazul’s body at the scene of the shooting in Xerada Asluubta area. Gen Abdikarim Yusuf Dhegobadan of Somalia told reporters the two had refused to stop at a roadblock and instead started firing at security agents.

South African passport

Dhegobadan added they recovered weapons from Fazul’s car and that soldiers who carried out the operation had been promoted to higher ranks.

"We took their IDs, one of which was a foreign passport," he said, adding that medicine, mobile phones, and laptops were also found in the car.

Fazul was carrying some $40,000 (Sh3.4 million) in cash and a South African passport bearing the name "Daniel Robinson".

Issued on April 13, 2009, it indicated that Abdullah had left South Africa on March 19, for Tanzania, where he was granted a visa.

He appeared to have come from Lower Juba, in Southern Somalia, where he was heading a group of foreign fighters under the name of "Abu-Abdirahman the Canadian", the sources added.

Somali Interior Minister Abdi Shakur Sheikh Hassan was killed in a suicide attack at his home in the capital, Mogadishu; a day later in what many believe was retaliation (see story page 36).

Police in Nairobi had received the reports of the death of Fazul and Dere on Thursday, but remained silent as they alerted other commanders in the country to be alert to a possible terror attack. "Security agencies have been on alert since Thursday night because there are indications these criminals may try to attack," said a senior officer, who asked not to be named because he is not authorised to speak for the Police.

Fazul had $5 million (Sh400 million) bounty on his head, and is believed to have trained in Afghanistan before the Nairobi operation, which the American FBI allege was planned from 1993.

Fazul was a Comorian with a Kenyan wife. He taught in Islamic schools in Lamu for years before joining AIAI and later it’s mutant – the Islamic Courts Union and Harakat Al Shabaab al Islamiyya, also known as Al Shabaab.

According to an FBI report, an associate of Fazul confessed that the militant trained with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He led the Islamist forces in Somalia together with Saleh Ali Nabhan, the Kenyan killed in a US air strike in Somalia about five year ago.

His inauguration

When the ferry MV Bukoba sank in Lake Victoria in 1996, taking al-Qaeda co-founder Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri with it, Fazul was one of the people sent to the scene by al-Qaeda, to try to verify that Abu Ubaidah was dead and had not in fact defected.

On November 11, 2009, reports say Fazul was "inaugurated" during a ceremony in Kismayo, according to a translation received by The Long War Journal, of an article posted on a website operated by the Hawiye clan, which supports the Somali insurgency.

During his speech, Fazul said he was appointed by Osama bin Laden and praised his predecessor, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who was killed during a US special operations raid in southern Somalia in mid-September 2009. Fazul also said that al-Qaeda and Shabaab would take the fight to neighbouring countries. "After Somalia we will proceed to Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia."

One of Fazul’s wives and her children were captured trying to escape to Kenya from Somalia in 2007.

They were arrested in Kiunga and brought to Nairobi for questioning. They were later deported to Somalia. A computer in her possession thought to have been Fazul’s was seized and was said to have vital information on terrorism training.

It was then that in the war in Somalia, Fazul was also thought to be in the border area near Ras Kamboni, along with remnants of the Islamic Courts Union.

On January 8, 2007, a US Air Force AC-130 gunship targeted al-Qaeda in the area, but Fazul was not among those killed even though earlier reports indicated he had been killed.