TARGET TIED TO KENYAN ATTACK PLOTS
NAIrObI • The man U.S. Navy SeALs tried to capture in Somalia on the weekend was a Kenyan who had plotted to attack his country’s parliament building and the united Nations headquarters in Nairobi, says a Kenyan government intelligence report.
The pre-dawn raid Saturday targeted Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, also known as Ikrima, but he is believed to have escaped.
In the internal report by Kenya’s National Intelligence Service, Mr. Abdulkadir is listed as the lead planner of a plot sanctioned by Al-Qaeda’s top leaders in Pakistan to carry out multiple attacks in east Africa in late 2011 and early 2012.
It also lists Samantha Lewthwaite, a british woman known as the “White Widow,” as one of several “key actors” in the plans to target the parliament buildings, the uN Office in Nairobi and Kenyan defence Forces camps. The plotters also intended to assassinate top Kenyan political and security officials.
Police disrupted that plot. Ms. Lewthwaite, who was married to one of the suicide bombers in the 2005 attack on London’s transit system, escaped capture when she produced a fraudulently obtained South African passport in another person’s name. Late last month Interpol, acting on a request from Kenya, issued an arrest notice for her.
dated one year before the Sept. 21 mall attack, the Kenyan report warned Al-Shabab members were in Nairobi “and are planning to mount suicide attacks on undisclosed date,
I assure you that [my father] is innocent
targeting Westgate Mall and Holy Family basilica.” Two suspects were believed to have suicide vests, grenades and AK-47 assault rifles.
It also warned of “Mumbai-style attacks,” referring to the 2008 assaults in which Al- Qaeda-linked gunmen stormed several locations with guns and grenades.
The report did not mention Mr. Abdulkadir in relation to the attack on Westgate Mall.
The SeAL raid in Somalia was one of two anti-terror missions by u.S. forces in Africa on the weekend. In Libya Saturday, the u.S. Army’s delta Force captured Nazih Abdul-Hamed Al-ruqai, known by his alias Anas Al-Libi, an Al-Qaeda leader linked to the 1998 u.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
u.S. officials said the raid was led by special operations delta Force marines, but the family and Libyan officials say the “kidnappers” included men speaking a local Arabic dialect.
The raid prompted a warning Monday from Libyan Islamic extremists who vowed to avenge Mr. Libi’s capture.
The revolutionaries of benghazi, Al-bayda & darna denounced the kidnapping, saying “this shameful act will cost the Libyan government a lot.”
The Federal bureau of Investigation and the central Intelligence Agency have been tracking Mr. Libi for years.
In 2000, he was indicted with others in Manhattan federal court. The indictment says Mr. Libi “conducted visual and photographic surveillance” of the u.S. embassy in Nairobi. He also participated in possible planning of attacks on british, French and Israeli targets in the city. According to 2001 federal court documents, a co-operating Al-Qaeda witness described him as computer engineer who ran the terrorist network’s computers.
His family in Tripoli painted a completely different picture, claiming he was innocent and had been working in a pizza restaurant while in britain, not masterminding international terrorist attacks.
His son, Abdullah Al-ruqaie, said his father had been forced to leave britain because of “police harassment.”
He described how his own childhood had been spent on the run, leaving primary school in Manchester for Afghanistan, where his father became close to Osama bin Laden, then in prison in Iran.
but he insisted his father had gone to Afghanistan to “help the oppressed” and was innocent of the murders of 224 people in the u.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and dar es Salaam.
“My father is a normal man,” he said.
“He told us everything about his life. He went from Libya to Afghanistan to help oppressed people there. I assure you that he is innocent, and this will be clear soon, when they fail to provide any evidence against him.”