1st LD Writethru Roundup: Kenyan police nab terror suspect with IS links

Kenyan police said Tuesday they are interrogating a suspect who was arrested last week for planning various terror attacks in East Africa.

Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinett said Mohamed Abdi Ali, a medical intern in Wote Hospital in Makueni County of eastern Kenya has links with the Islamic State (IS) group.

"From our initial investigations, it has been established that the terror network linked to Ali has been engaged in the active radicalization, recruitment of university students and other Kenyan youth into terrorism networks," Boinett said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

He said Ali who has been planning to carry out various attacks targeting the East African nation was arraigned in court which granted the police additional 30 days of investigations.

"The suspects were planning large scale attacks akin to the Westgate Mall attack with the intention of killing innocent Kenyans. His network also included medical experts with whom they planned to unleash a biological attack in Kenya using anthrax," Boinett said.

Some 67 people were killed and more than 200 others injured when Al-Shabaab sprayed shoppers with bullets at the Westgate mall attack in September 2013.

The East African nation faces insecurity as bomb attacks using improvised explosive devices and grenades have become more frequent in the capital Nairobi, the coastal city of Mombasa and northern eastern region since KDF entered Somalia in 2011 to secure the shared border with the lawless country.

Boinett said Ali who studied at Kampala International University in Uganda prior to returning to Kenya has been facilitating Kenyan youths to secretly leave the country to joint terror groups in Libya and Syria.

He said Ali's terror network within Kenya spreads as far as the Coast, North Rift and Western regions as well as other countries - Somalia, Libya and Syria.

"Ali's arrest and those of his accomplices is a major breakthrough in the fighting against terrorism in Kenya and the region," Boinett said.

According to the police chief, a close accomplice who is also Ali's wife, Nuseiba Mohamed Haji, who is a student at Kampala International University, was arrested in Uganda while attempting to evade capture by the authorities.

"Her associate who is also an accomplice, Fatuma Mohamed Hanshi has also been arrested in Uganda," Boinett said.

He said Ali's arrest, his accomplices in the terror network in Kenya have gone into hiding to evade justice. These included Ahmed Hish and Farah Dagane - both medical interns in Kitale in northwest Kenya.

"The police are committed to pursuing these criminals and bring them to justice," Boinnet said, noting that Kenya was working closely with other security agencies in the region to ensure terror network is broken completely and those behind the plot are arrested.

"The police take this opportunity to caution those giving refuge to these criminals and urge them to surrender them to the nearest police station, failure to which they will be held culpable as accomplices," Bonnet warned.

The police have also put a 20,000 U.S. dollar bounty for any information that may lead to the arrest of the three terror suspects on the run. Endit