Kenya says hunting British jihadi with ties to Somali militants

By Reuters

Kenya suspects a British jihadi with links to Somali militant group al Shabaab has entered the East African country and wants to arrest him, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry posted an appeal for information to arrest Malik Yassin, posting a picture of a bearded man and describing him as a tall and slender white man with a British accent.

“Malik Yassin, a British citizen, is suspected to have sneaked into the country and police have issued an alert for his arrest,” the ministry said in a statement posted on its Twitter feed.

“Police suspect that Malik is one of the al Shabaab foreign fighters of British origin,” it added.

Kenya has been on heightened alert following a spate of bomb and gun attacks by al Shabaab, a Somali Islamist group which has said its assaults are aimed at driving Kenyan troops and other members of an African Union force out of Somalia.

In April, al Shabaab gunmen stormed Garissa University near the Somali border and killed at least 147 people. In 2013, the militant group killed 67 people when it raided the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.

The interior ministry said another British jihadi, Thomas Evans, was killed in June during an al Shabaab attack on a Kenyan military base in northern coastal region of Lamu County, near the Somali border.

In the past, Kenya has been a traditional transit route for Britons seeking to join al Shabaab in war-torn Somalia. Michael Adebolajo, who hacked a British soldier to death on a London street in 2013, was deported by Kenya after being arrested by the Kenyan police near the Somali border.