Kenyan authorities have uncovered a
terror cell of extremist medics linked to the Islamic State group that
is suspected of plotting a “biological attack” on the East African
nation and recruiting university students to Libya and Syria.
A court allowed anti-terrorism officials to
keep Mohammed Abdi Ali, a medical intern at Wote Hospital in southeast
Makueni County, who was arrested Friday, for an additional 30 days to
complete investigations, Kenyan Inspector General of Police Joseph
Boinnet said Tuesday.
“Mohammed Abdi Ali’s terror network within
Kenya spreads as far as the Coast Region, North Rift Region and Western
Region, as well as other countries that include Somalia, Libya and
Syria,” Boinnet said in a press release obtained by International
Business Times. “His network also included medical experts with whom
they planned to unleash a biological attack in Kenya using anthrax. His
arrest and those of his accomplices is a major breakthrough in the fight
against terrorism in Kenya and the region.”
Boinnet said Ali’s wife, a medical student at
Kampala International University in Uganda, along with her associate who
is an alleged accomplice, have also been arrested. Two of Ali’s
suspected accomplices, Ahmed Hish and Farah Dagane — both medical
interns in the western town of Kitale — are still at large.
The terror cell linked to Ali has been
allegedly radicalizing and recruiting Kenyan college students and other
Kenyan youth. The suspects also were allegedly planning “large scale”
attacks akin to the 2013 siege on the Westgate shopping in Nairobi, in
which al-Shabab gunmen from neighboring Somalia killed 67 people.
"Kenya is working closely with other
agencies in the region to ensure that the terror network is broken
completely and those behind the terror plot are apprehended," Boinnet
said.
The development comes just days after the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility
for its first terrorist attack in Somalia. Although government
officials denied the claim, the incident signaled the extremist group’s
desire to make inroads into a war-torn region dominated by its rival, al
Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab.
This month, a new group calling itself Jahba East Africa gave bayah, or an oath of allegiance,
to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and recognized him as the “rightful
khalifa [leader] of all Muslims.” The group may be made up of former
members of al-Shabab. A representative said the group includes fighters
not only in Somalia but also in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and
condemned al-Shabab for being a “psychological and physical prison,”
according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors terrorist activity.
Hussein Mohamed contributed to reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.
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