Jamaican Muslim cleric deported to Tanzania

By Cyrus Ombati

Controversial Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal was finally deported to Tanzania after all international airlines declined to fly him.

Faisal was driven by road to the Kenya-Tanzania border and handed over to the authorities in Tanzania on Monday evening.

Immigration and anti-terrorism officials said they decided to deport him to Tanzania because that was where he arrived from on December 24 at the Lunga Lunga border point.

Expectations were that the Tanzanian authorities would also deport him to Malawi from where he entered the country.

Before his arrival in Kenya, he had travelled to Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, Swaziland, Malawi, and Tanzania. He was arrested minutes after attending evening prayers at a mosque in Nyali.

Sources said he chose to travel through road because he could not pass international airports or any other entry point linked to the e-border control system.

Faisal was brought from Mombasa to Nairobi on Sunday where immigration officials prepared his deportation papers.

Our sources said his laptop contained

But Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang dismissed allegations by the Muslim Human Rights Forum that Muslim clerics were being targeted.

Police said the cleric's passport shows he tried to enter Kenya previously but was denied entry. Faisal was deported from Britain in 2007 where he had lived for 20 years for allegedly preaching "hatred against Jews, Hindus and Westerners". He had been jailed in 2003 for the offence.

Born Trevor William Forrest, Faisal, who is from St James in Jamaica, left the island for the UK 26 years ago.

His parents were Salvation Army officers and he was raised as a Christian, but when 16 years old, he went to Saudi Arabia, where he became a Muslim and spent eight years studying Islam at Madina University.

Later, he took a degree in Islamic Studies in the Saudi capital of Riyadh before going to the UK.