Kenyan police on Thursday re-arrested a Muslim man suspected of terrorism links just hours after he was acquitted on murder charges in connection with the 2002 al-Qaeda-linked bombing of an Israeli hotel near the southern port city of Mombasa, his lawyer said.
Omar Said Omar was arrested at the Kamiti maximum-security prison on the outskirts of Nairobi as he was about to leave the facility following a judge’s decision to throw out the murder charges for lack of evidence, the lawyer said.
”Omar was rearrested and whisked away by a battalion of 30 general service unit [GSU] officers and now he is being held at the GSU headquarters here,” attorney Winston Ngaira said.
”My client is being held incommunicado and I have been denied access to him,” he said. ”A senior police officer told me that Omar would be charged with possession of firearms without a permit on Friday morning.”
A Kenyan official familiar with the case said police claimed to have found an unlicensed gun in Omar’s house in 2003 while he was being investigated for ties with the November 28 2002 bombing of the Mombasa Paradise hotel.
Earlier on Thursday, Omar, a computer expert, and three other Muslim men were ordered released by Nairobi High Court Justice John Osiemo, who said prosecutors had not proven any link between the four and the attack in which 18 people, including three suicide car bombers, were killed.
Omar was the only one of the four that police claim confessed to involvement in acts of terrorism, and earlier this year Ngaira said the United States was interested in extraditing him, possibly to testify against terrorism suspects.
US officials have declined to comment on the matter but are thought to be interested in Omar for questioning about the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and other terrorist acts. — Sapa-AFP