Kenya handed over a suspected member of the al-Qaeda terror network to US officials on Wednesday and identified him as Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed.
National Security Minister Chris Murungaru said Hemed had participated in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and neighbouring Tanzania in which 231 people, including 12 Americans, were killed. He said Hemed had provided useful
information related to the attacks.
Hemed, who is said to have used the aliases Ngaka and Chuck Norris, also gave investigators ”useful leads” on attacks last November 28 on the Kenyan coast which killed 11 Kenyans and three Israeli tourists, as well ”possible future terrorist plans in the region,” Murungaru said.
Earlier this month, the United States and Britain issued travel alerts for East Africa warning that al-Qaeda operatives were still active in the region. Hemed was seized by Somali gunmen in Mogadishu, the capital of neighbouring Somalia, on March 18, and was handed over to Kenya authorities.
Murungaru said Hemed was en route to the United States on Wednesday because all ”the arrested terrorists connected to the (1998) attacks were tried in the United States.”
A US federal court convicted four men in May 2001 for their role in the embassy bombings and sentenced them to life in prison. US officials in Nairobi refused all comment on Hemed. Hemed’s nationality is not clear. But Murungaru said he has
”claimed” to be Kenyan and Afghani as well as from several other East African countries.
Last week, US officials in Washington said the man in Kenyan custody was thought to be a low- or mid-level al-Qaeda operative who is suspected of having played a role in the 1998 bombings.
The November attacks were first claimed by the previously unknown Army of Palestine, but al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility. The group is also blamed for the 1998 embassy bombings.
Sources close to the investigation have said they believe at least one or two suspects wanted in connection with the November 28 attacks are hiding in Somalia. The Muslim country in the Horn of Africa has been without an effective government since 1991 and has been cited by US officials as a possible haven for terrorists.
Investigators said that they believe there is a link between the terrorists who carried out the 1998 embassy bombings and the November 28 attacks. Police sources say a suspect wanted in connection with the November 28 attacks, known as Abdul Karim, has been identified by his Kenyan wife and brother-in-law as Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a fugitive al-Qaeda operative charged in the embassy bombings.
Fazul, who is in his late 20s or early 30s, was born in the Comoros Islands off the coast of Mozambique and also carries a Kenyan passport. He is said to have trained with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Also on Wednesday, police in Kenya’s Indian Ocean port of Mombasa detained three Kenyan men for questioning in connection with the November 28 attacks, a police source, who did not want to be identified, said.
Relatives of the detained men said Khallad Jenneby, his brother Ali Jenneby, and their cousin, Mbaruk Basty, were picked after police went to their homes in Mombasa’s Tudor neighbourhood.
”We don’t know why they have arrested them … because they have not told us,” said Saada Swaleh, Ali Jenneby’s wife.
Swaleh said all three had trained as pilots in the US state of Florida in 1998. Another relative, who did not want to be identified, said the men had gone to Oman after Florida and returned to Kenya in 2000.
Police believe the bomb used in the November 28 suicide attack on the Paradise Hotel was made in a rented house in the Tudor neighbourhood. – Sapa-AP