Al-Qaida fugitive gives Kenyan police the slip

Al-Qaida fugitive gives Kenyan police the slip
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of Africa's most wanted terrorists, escaped before raid on coastal hideout, police say
Xan Rice in Nairobi
guardian.co.uk,
Monday August 4 2008
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One of al-Qaida's top operatives in Africa narrowly escaped arrest at the weekend after slipping through a police trap, according to Kenyan security officials.
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who has a $5m bounty from the US on his head, was reported to have left his hideout in the coastal resort town of Malindi shortly before a raid on Saturday night. Police had already arrested Mahfoudh Ashur, the owner of the house where police say Mohammed was staying, along with Ashur's wife and son. They denied a charge of sheltering a fugitive in court today."We have not still been able to catch him [Fazul], but we are on his trail," said Eric Kiraithe, the Kenyan police spokesman, today.Fazul is accused of masterminding simultaneous al-Qaida attacks in Mombasa in 2002. A car packed with explosives rammed into an Israeli-owned hotel, killing 15 people, and two surface-to-air missiles were fired at an Israeli charter plane, narrowly missing their target. He has been indicted in the US for involvement in earlier attacks on the American embassies in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, which occurred 10 years ago this week and killed 235 people.
Fazul, who is in his mid-30s, speaks five languages and is considered a master of disguise, is reported to have crossed into Kenya from Somalia a few days ago to seek treatment for a kidney condition. Acting on a tip-off, dozens of anti-terrorist police surrounded Mahfoudh's house in Malindi on Kenya's northern coast on Saturday night. Other police blocked escape routes along the main roads and seafront. But when police broke down the door of the house, Fazul was not there. A laptop computer and two fake passports were seized for examination by police.
Born in the Comoros, Fazul was a teacher before training at Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s. Since the embassy attacks, which brought al-Qaida to international attention for the first time, he has outwitted police in Kenya several times. In July 2002 he was arrested in Mombasa for armed robbery, but escaped a day later before police realised who he was.
A year later, after marrying a Kenyan woman, Fazul is believed to have avoided arrest only after his housemate detonated a grenade during a police raid, allowing him to slip away in the confusion.
Fazul and two other members of al-Qaida's east Africa cell, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudan, are said to have taken up residence in Mogadishu, Somalia's chaotic capital, but fled when Ethiopian forces toppled an Islamist movement there in late December 2006.
The US launched several unsuccessful strikes targeting the men as they fled towards southern Somalia. Fazul's wife and several of his children were arrested trying to cross the porous border from Somalia into Kenya in January last year, and it is thought that he was traveling with them until reaching the frontier. A laptop taken from his wife is said to have contained a lengthy memoir written by Fazul detailing his passage to terrorism.
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This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Monday August 04 2008. It was last updated at 14:28 on August 04 2008.