A Swedish citizen, Magd Najjar, has been detained by Kenyan police on alleged links to Al-Shabaab.
Kenyan media reported, citing government officials, that the Swedish was arrested after the police learnt that ‘he was [in the country] illegally and was eager to join or had joined the militant group’.
According to Kenyan Police spokesman, quoted by the Standardmedia, the Swedish suspect was an accomplice of the wanted German terror suspect Khaled Mueller, whom the Kenyans are officially hunting as of last Saturday.
The travelling documents of the Swedish man, Kenyan authorities had granted him a visa – valid from Jan. 31, 2011 to April 30, 2011 – and he entered the country on Feb. 23, 2011. However, he never bothered to renew his visa for about a year.
Kenyan police disclosed an investigation is underway to to know if he had been to Somalia and back using the porous borders.
Another official was quoted as saying that ‘he cannot account some of his time [in Kenya] and there are fears he may have gone to Somalia and came back to recruit more foreigners’.
Nonetheless, in spite of all these accusations, the Kenyans intend to charge the man only for being illegally in the country and send him home.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe was quoted as saying that ‘he has been charged with being illegally in the country and we intend to ask the courts to fine him before he is deported’.
Sweden is the third European country, alongside Britain and Germany, to have her citizen accused of terror links by the Kenyan police this year.
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Related:
Kenya on hunt for a German terror suspect
Report: UK citizens make up a quarter of Al-Shabaab’s foreign fighters
Kenya: British terror suspect on trial, as 29 Ugandans detained
Kenya: Hunt for a British terror suspect
You can find analyses on Al-Shabaab in the Somalia archive.
Check the Kenya archive or the Somalia archive or the terrorism archive for related news and analyses.
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