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Kenyan Muslims 'harassed'
05/03/2003 13:05 - (SA)
Nairobi - Kenyan Muslim leaders complained on Wednesday that investigators probing last November's twin attack on Israeli targets in the port city of Mombasa were harassing and targetting people of the Islamic faith.
"It is worrying that people who have been questioned by investigators are Muslims. They are usually held incommunicado and are not allowed to have legal services," Abdulghafur El-Busaidy, chairperson of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem), said.
On November 28 suicide bombers rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into the Mombasa Paradise Hotel, killing 12 Kenyans and three Israelis.
Two missiles were also fired at an Israeli jet carrying 260 tourists, but narrowly missed the plane as it took off from Moi International Airport.
After the raid, more than 10 people, all but two of them Muslims, were detained for questioning, but later freed. Last week police arrested three members of the same family and two of them on Tuesday this week.
Kenyan police are still holding one person and have named Saleh Nabhan Saleh, a Kenyan of Arabic origin as the bombmaker.
They say he is holed up in neighbouring Somalia, a country which has lacked an effective central administration for more than a decade.
Prominent Islamic preacher Sheikh Ali Shee said US and Israeli governments have sent their intelligence agents around the world, including to Kenya, to "punish Muslims for siding with Palestinians in the Middle East, at the behest of fighting terrorism".
"For sure, the whole investigation targets Muslims - anybody with an Islamic name, with a long beard, who practises the Islamic tradition.
"US and Israel, by sending their agents, have a sinister agenda, they want to paint a picture that anybody who is involved in bombing is a Muslim," Shee said.
"Why should foreign agents, FBI and Mossad, be involved in the probe? Kenyan investigators are enough," El-Busaidy asked.
Joseph Nangurai, Kenya's senior police officer leading the probe team, said Muslims are not targeted at all and foreign agents are not involved in the investigations.
"Come on, we are professionals, we don't target anybody of any religion, we follow leads," Nangurai said.
He said the probe is exclusively carried out by Kenyans, "but Israeli and US agents have the liberty to be in Kenya to collect intelligence".
Professor Mohammed Hyder, head of the Muslim Civic Education Trust, said the climate of world politics has nurtured a negative attitude towards Muslims, especially in Kenya where terrorism attacks have taken place.
"US plans to attack Iraq, the war against terrorism, last year's attacks in Mombasa and 1998 bombing of the US embassy, make Muslims more emotional and sensitive to any harassment," Hyder said.
Sheikh Mohammed Dor Mohammed, the secretary-general of the Council of Islamic Imams and Preachers, urged the Kenyan government to restrain "FBI and Mossad agents from harassing Muslims along the coast".
"If it doesn't, then we shall organise some strike to paralyse operations in Mombasa," he explained.
- AFP
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