NAIROBI, Kenya - Police and protesters fought running battles as a violent
backlash to the killing of a radical Islamic preacher continued Tuesday in
Kenya's second-largest city of Mombasa, which left several people
hospitalized, police and human rights officials said.
The killing Monday of Aboud Rogo Mohammed, who was shot to death as he drove
in his car with his family, falls into a pattern of extrajudicial killings
and forced disappearances of suspected terrorists, allegedly being
orchestrated by Kenyan police, human rights groups say. The attack has
brought to the surface tensions in a city established centuries ago by
Muslim traders from the Arabian peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, now
home to hundreds of thousands of people of Arab descent and a large Somali
population.
Police officers teargased youths on their second day of protests. Hussein
Khalid of the Muslim for Human Rights group said police were using teargas
against stone-throwing protesters. Khalid said one person was stabbed and
hospitalized Tuesday.
Regional Police boss Aggrey Adoli said officers were forced to keep violent
protests from spreading after protests they led to the death of one person
and the vandalism of two churches and businesses on Monday.
"We are trying to contain them so that we don't create more deaths. Deaths
and destruction of property will not help with anything," Adoli said.
Mohammed was recently sanctioned by the U.S. government and the U.N. for his
alleged connection to an al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group, al-Shabab.
He is the fifth alleged Muslim extremist who has been killed or who
disappeared in the last four months, according to human rights campaigners.
One corpse was found mutilated and the other four men vanished
Mohammed was shot dead as he drove with his family in Mombasa. His wife was
wounded in the leg, said Mohammed's father who was also in the car along
with Mohammed's 5-year-old daughter. He said he and the girl weren't
injured.
Adoli said police have asked Muslim elders and religious leaders to urge the
young protesters to stop the violence. A team of investigators from police
headquarters in Nairobi arrived in Mombasa to start investigating Mohammed's
killing, he said.
Police believe that Mohammed had ties to al-Qaida and was part of terror
cell with links to al-Shabab militants that was planning to carry out bomb
attacks in Kenya during Christmas. Other members of cell include Briton
Samantha Lewthwaite, who police say is on the run. She is the widow of
Jermaine Lindsay, one of the suicide bombers who killed 52 commuters in
multiple bombings of London's transport system on July 7, 2005.
The other is Briton Jermaine Grant, sentenced to three years in prison for
immigration offenses and lying to a government official about his identity.
Grant is also charged with conspiring to commit a felony and possessing
explosive materials
In January, Mohammed was charged with possession of a cache of guns,
ammunition and detonators. He also faced charges of membership in al-Shabab
Al-Shabab has vowed to carry out a large-scale attack in Nairobi in
retaliation for Kenya sending troops into neighboring Somalia to fight
al-Shabab. The Kenyan government blames al-Shabab for several kidnappings on
Kenyan soil, including those of four Europeans. The kidnappings greatly
harmed the Kenya's coastal tourism industry.
Mohammed was acquitted in 2005 of murder charges for the 2002 bombing of an
Israeli-owned tourist hotel near Mombasa which killed more than 12 people.
In conjunction with that attack, two surface-to-air missiles were fired at
an Israeli-owned airliner packed with Israeli tourists as it took off from
Mombasa. The missiles narrowly missed.
Prosecutors at the trial said Mohammed had been in contact with Fazul
Abdullah Mohammed, al-Qaida's East Africa head, who the U.S. said
masterminded the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which
killed 231 people, including 12 Americans. A Somali soldier shot the
al-Qaida leader dead at a checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia, last year.
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Received on Tue Aug 28 2012 - 09:43:37 EDT
