The National Police Service (NPS) is pursuing local Al-Shabaab contacts who aided three Kenyans to sneak to Somalia with the aim of joining the terror group.
NPS Director for Corporate Communications, Charles Owino, said in a statement on Wednesday the contacts assisted Mohamed Abdalla Asman from Nairobi’s Majengo area, and Hamisi Hemed and Ali Ahmed Ali both from Malindi to join the Somalia-based terrorist group for training early this month.
The three suspects are said to be planning an attack on their return to the country according to Owino.
Of the three, Asman alias Papa or Raymond has previously been charged and convicted after a botched plan to travel to Somalia for Al Shabaab training; serving a jail term of five years from October 4, 2013, to July 12, 2017.
Police at the time identified Sheikh Ibrahim Umar alias Amru, a religious leader at the Answar Sunna Mosque, as the key facilitator of Asman’s aborted trip to Somalia.
Members of the public have been urged to remain vigilant and report any suspicious individual to the police service.
The police also warned Kenyan families and businessmen facilitating and abetting radicalization and terrorist activities of firm action.
“We wish to warn parents, guardians or religious leaders withholding information on radicalization that they are liable for prosecution for abetting crime,” Owino said in the statement released to newsrooms on Wednesday.
“Equally the parents and guardians risk losing their children to terrorism and eventually destroying their families and the entire community,” he warned.
