Kenya: Security Alert (Kenya on high terror alert after assassination attempt)

The East African Standard ^ | June 5, 2005

[jmc1969]

After making an attempt on the life of Somalia PM, the terrorists are said to have moved into Kenya and intelligence officers are following leads to their capture.

Kenya's security forces are on high alert following information that two groups linked to terror mastermind Osama bin Laden may have entered the country. The two terror groups, Al-Itthad-al-Islamiya and Al-Takfir W'al Hijra are linked to Mr Musab al Zarqawi, a close ally of bin Laden.

Kenyas' security apparatus, say sources, has information to the effect that Zarqawi previously had terror cells in both Kenya and Somalia. Zarqawis' Kenyan link is suspected to be the conduit for passing money to terror recruits at Kiamboni in Somalia and operates under the fake name of Abdul Karim.

According to the sources, Zarqawi first established contacts in Kenya at Lamu and at Ras Kiamboni, in the South of Somalia, 1996. Ras Kiamboni, an Indian Ocean island, is a stone's throw away from the Kenyan islands of Siyu and Faza near Lamu.

Both Kenya and the US intelligence concur that Zarqawi, at the behest of Osama bin Laden, was the key planner and financier of the twin terrorist attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam on August 7, 1998, that left close to 200 people dead. Zarqawi is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. The US government has a 25 million dollar (Sh2 billion) prize on his head.

Another suspected link to Zarqawi is Hassan Awil, a graduate of Al-Awal University in Baghdad. He is on record as vowing that the Somali government currently in Nairobi would settle in Mogadishu "only over his dead body."

[George Smiley]

It's not an assassination attempt, it's a kleptocratic shift change.

[Calpernia]

ping

[Velveeta]

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[Dog]

Fyi..