Kenya blocked UN anti-terrorism team tracking Al-Shabaab, says report
By Stanley Mwahanga and David Ochami
Updated Wednesday, May 20th 2015 at 00:00 GMT +3
Kenya Defence Forces'
troops patrol the streets of Fafadun township. A report has said Kenya
was frustrating the work of a UN team that has been tracking Al-Shabaab,
piracy and violations of an arms embargo on Somalia. [PHOTO:
FILE/STANDARD]
Terrorists planted an explosive at the Jomo Kenyatta International
Airport in Nairobi last year, according to the latest United Nations
report tracking the activities of Al-Shabaab terror networks in the Horn
of Africa.
Kenya has never publicly acknowledged that an improvised explosive
device (IED) was to blame in the security scare at the airport last
year, but the UN says the bomb was an attempt by the terror group to
forment fear in the country.
The bomb scare precipitated the arrest of
the Third Secretary in Somalia’s Kenyan embassy Ilyas Yussuf Warsame and
five other unnamed people.
The report also says a UN investigator Babatunde Taiwo, an armed groups
expert, faced hostility from senior Kenya and Somalia officials and was
repeatedly attacked, threatened and finally denied re-entry into the
country by immigration officers after the Westgate attack in Nairobi.
The report says the Westgate attack was “conceived in Somalia, planned
at a United Nations refugee camp and executed in Eastleigh, but that in
the days preceding and following the attack, Kenyan authorities began to
obstruct the operations of the UN Monitoring Group of Somalia and
Eritrea.
The group tracks operations of Al-Shabaab in Kenya and its affiliate
Al-Hijra.
In recent years, this UN panel has named several top Kenyans over
alleged links to Al-Shabaab and the controversial Riyadha Mosque in
Nairobi’s Pumwani slums. In 2011, it named a minister and nominated MP,
who are still in Government, as fund raisers for the controversial
mosque.
The report says Kenya was frustrating the work of the UN team
that has been tracking Al-Shabaab, piracy and violations of an arms
embargo on Somalia.
See also: 'Jihadi brides' to be charged tomorrow
It talks of several incidents of obstruction and where Government
officials blatantly lied to them.
According to the
report, Kenya prevented an expert from remaining at his duty station,”
after advising the UN to relocate him for his own safety, but refused to
allow him back after the alleged security threat was addressed or
discounted.
“The Monitoring Group continues to be confronted with efforts to
obstruct its work, especially by means of targeting either the
investigations or the credibility and reputation of individual members
of the Group,” says the report dated October 13, 2014.
The report was prepared on September 9 last year, for the chairman of
the UN Security Council Committee.
In 2013, the panel named an employee of the Senate, Abdulmajid Ali,
alleging that he has links to Al-Shabaab. Kenyan officials then openly
blasted Mr Taiwo, who was alleged to have uncovered Al-Shabaab’s
activities in Kenya.
Kenyan authorities also have not publicly acknowledged that there has
been a diplomatic dispute between Nairobi and UN over the alleged
mistreatment of Taiwo who was forced to leave Kenya after the Westgate
attack on the recommendation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The report claims that
on August 30, 2013 Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho
wrote to the Director General of the UN office in Nairobi alleging a
security threat against Taiwo, causing him to be relocated from Kenya.
“Following a UN security assessment that cleared the expert’s return to
Nairobi and in the light of the mandate of the Monitoring Group under
Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, the Under-Secretary-
General for Political Affairs and the Acting Head of the Department of
Safety and Security informed the Permanent Representative of Kenya to
the United Nations, Macharia Kamau, in a letter dated 24 December 2013,
of the expert’s redeployment to Nairobi,” the report says.
But in a letter dated December 30, 2013, Kenya was not willing to allow
the expert entry into the country.
The report does not state what reasons were given for not allowing Taiwo
back into the country, but it adds that on January 14 last year, the UN
wrote to Kenya stressing the UN monitor’s importance to the anti-terror
probe and requested his immediate return, but there was no response.
By the time of writing the report last year, the Government had not
responded, the report says and concludes that the official’s relocation
“significantly interfered with the UN probe of Al-Shabaab at a critical
juncture in Somalia.
See also: 'Jihadi brides' to be charged tomorrow
Yesterday, Mr Kibicho said he would respond to these allegations when he
returns from abroad.
“There is a clear procedure of vetting foreigners who come to our
country. Whether such foreigners work for the UN or otherwise. I need to
be in Nairobi to check the facts about that specific case,” he wrote
back.
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