Kenyan authorities believe three terrorism suspects detained at the weekend are potential suicide bombers who may be linked to this month’s murder of a British Broadcasting Corporation journalist in Somalia, a senior police official said on Monday.
The trio had documents detailing the fatal shooting on February 9 in Mogadishu of BBC producer Kate Peyton as well as other documents indicating that they had been trained to carry out suicide attacks, the official said.
In addition, the official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the three were believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
”They had documents detailing the killing of the BBC and documents that indicated they were trained suicide bombers,” the official said.
”The documents don’t say whether these men were actually involved in the murder but they give precise details of the killing,” the official said.
Peyton was shot in the back as she entered a car on a main street in Mogadishu just hours after she arrived in the city to cover the expected relocation from exile of the Somali transitional government.
Analysts believe she was murdered by elements opposed to the government or those who have vehemently rejected the proposed deployment of regional peacekeepers to help stand up the administration.
The official declined to comment further on the contents of the documents but said the three men had entered Kenya from Somalia on Saturday and told border police they were aid workers needing an escort to the Kenyan town of Garissa.
After receiving an escort to Garissa, the trio apparently mistakenly left the documents in question at the local police station where officers read them and promptly chased the suspects down, the official said.
The three — a Sudanese national of Arab origin and two Kenyans — were immediately flown to Nairobi for questioning by anti-terrorism police, the official said.
Three other people who sought to obtain their release from custody in Nairobi have also been detained, the official said.
The route into Kenya from Somalia is suspected to have been used by terrorists in at least one earlier attack: the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
Kenyan officials believe bomb materiel and other weapons were smuggled into the country for the November 28 suicide bombing of the Mombasa Paradise hotel that killed 18 people, including 12 Kenyans and three Israelis.
The bombers were also killed in the attack which is believed to have been carried out by al-Qaeda affiliates.
On the same day, there was a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet with a shoulder-fired missile as it took off from Mombasa’s International airport.
Al-Qaeda has also been fingered in the twin 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, as well as in a more recent plot to attack the new US embassy in Nairobi.
Three suspects now on trial for involvement in the Mombasa attacks are also accused in the embassy bombings. – Sapa-AFP