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NAIROBI, Aug 2: Hundreds of Kenyan Muslims gathered here on Saturday to protest a controversial draft anti-terrorism law they say will allow police to single them out for harassment.
“We ask the government not to pass the anti-terrorism bill because it will robs us of our freedom and rights,” said Sheikh Ahmed Ali, the organizing secretary of the Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims (SUPKEM).
“We want the law to protect us,” Sheikh Ahmed told the gathering at Uhuru park, in central Nairobi.
Muslims make up a sizable proportion of Kenya’s population, especially on the coast.
The anti-terrorism bill, which has yet to be debated in parliament, has drawn strong criticism from rights groups, opposition lawmakers and the Muslim community, who claim it bestows too much power on police.
The bill would give police the power to detain terrorist suspsects for 36 hours without charge and to search their property without warrant.
“The government should stop arresting people as terror suspects unless they have evidence,” said Hassan Omar, an imam in the coastal city of Mombasa, where a suspect facing arrest detonated a grenade on Friday, killing himself and a police official.
On Nov 28 last year, 18 people — 12 Kenyans, three Israelis and three bombers — were killed in an attack on a tourist hotel near Mombasa. The same day, an Israeli charter jet narrowly missed being downed by missiles as it took off from Mombasa airport.
The five people so far charged with murder over the Mombasa hotel attack are all Muslims.
Police had earlier detained and interrogated dozens of other people, who were released after police found nothing to link them to terrorism.
Muslim residents of Mombasa accuse police of singling out the community for harassment at the behest of US security agencies.
INTERROGATION: Police in Mombasa were on Saturday questioning a suspect who was detained just hours before the fellow suspect who killed both himself and a police officer when arrested.
A policeman was also seriously hurt and a female passer-by suffered shrapnel injuries when the suspect detonated a grenade as police took him into their car after making the arrest on Friday.
The suspect now being questioned by police was arrested just hours before the incident and gave police the information that led to the second arrest operation.
Along with the dead suspect, believed to be from Yemen, another individual detained by the police managed to escape in the confusion.
National Security Minister Chris Murungaru said the suspect now being questioned provided “vital information” that led to the raid on the pair at an Internet cafe.
The arrests were carried out by police in connection with last November’s car-bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa.
A member of the police team that carried out Friday’s operation said documents found on the the dead suspect had linked him “beyond reasonable doubt” to the Al Qaeda network.
“Anti-terrorism police have recovered documents linking the dead suspect with Al Qaeda,” said the official.
He said the fact that the suspect chose to commit suicide rather than be questioned by police also indicated that he was a member of an extremist group.
“We are making good progress in the terrorism investigation,” Gerald Wanjama, the police commander for the Coast province, said.
“Our leads are bearing fruit,” he added.
Murungaru described Friday’s arrest as “a major breakthrough in the fight against terrorism”.
Five people have been charged with murder over the hotel bombing.
Both that bombing and a near-miss missile attack on a jet carrying Israeli tourists were later claimed by the Al Qaeda.
An officer from the anti-terrorism police unit said the team had seized mobile telephones from several suspects in the course of the investigations.
In May the United States, Britain and several other Western governments issued advisories warning their nationals against visits to east Africa because of “imminent terrorist threats”.
Britain subsequently cancelled all flights by the British Airways to and from Kenya, resulting in the near collapse of the Kenyan tourism industry.
Although BA flights to the capital Nairobi resumed on July 3, the carrier’s connections with Mombasa, Kenya’s tourist hub, have not resumed.
During a visit to Mombasa last month, the British ambassador to Kenya, Edward Clay, said London still believed there to be a “credible” threat of an attack on Western interests in the eastern African nation.
The US embassy in Nairobi was destroyed in Aug 1998 in a car bomb attack claimed by the Al Qaeda, killing 213 people. A near-simultaneous attack hit the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 11 people. —AFP
