From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Jan 22 2010 - 08:25:08 EST
Somali rebels deny threatening to attack Nairobi
Fri Jan 22, 2010 10:02am GMT
* Spokesman says internet recording is fake
* Anger grows among Kenyan Somalis over arrests
* Analyst says al Shabaab not unified group
(Updates with Somali analyst, background)
By Sahra Abdi and Abdiaziz Hassan
NAIROBI, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Somalia's hardline al Shabaab rebels denied on
Friday they had threatened to attack Kenya following a crackdown on Somalis
in its capital Nairobi, and said a recording posted on the internet was a
fake.
Renewed fears over the insurgents' links with Yemen and al Qaeda, and an
attack on the home of a Danish cartoonist by an axe-wielding Somali man with
reported ties to al Shabaab, have focused attention on the militant group.
A recording posted online said the threat was composed by militants angered
by Kenya's decision to deport a Jamaican Islamic cleric and the deaths of
protesters in Nairobi who took to the streets a week ago to demonstrate
against the move.
But al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told Reuters by telephone
the group had not posted the recording.
"We didn't threaten Kenya. That story is a false one. We never posted that
on the internet ... Everything needs to be checked first by the media to
make sure they know what they are writing about," Rage said.
Al Shabaab, which Washington says is al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of
Africa state, has verbally threatened to attack Kenya in the past. But anger
has been rising among the Somali community in recent days after Kenyan
security forces detained hundreds of Somalis living in a Nairobi suburb.
Al Shabaab has also threatened to launch attacks inside Ethiopia -- as well
as Uganda and Burundi because they have peacekeeping troops in Somalia --
but has yet to follow through.
"Al Shabaab is not a homogeneous organisation that has the same stance on
certain issues," Afyare Abdi Elmi, a Somali political science professor at
Qatar University, told Reuters.
"NO CAPACITY TO HIT NAIROBI"
"One wing may want to launch attacks in the region, and others do not have
an opinion or do not agree ... They do not have the capacity to hit Nairobi,
but these new threats plus their cooperation with the Yemeni al Qaeda shows
their international stance and that their mission is no longer local."
Al Shabaab denied carrying out a suicide bombing at a university graduation
ceremony in Mogadishu in December that killed 22 people, including three
government ministers.
But few Somalis believed them, and the U.N. envoy to Somalia said it was
"outrageous" to blame anyone else for that attack.
Kenya was hit by al Qaeda-linked strikes in 1998 and 2002 and security
alerts were issued warning of possible attacks by Somalis on upmarket
shopping malls in the capital last year.
In the online recording, men chanted in Swahili: "God willing we will arrive
in Nairobi, we will enter Nairobi, God willing we will enter ... when we
arrive we will hit, hit until we kill, weapons we have, praise be to God,
they are enough."
But Rage told Reuters that the rebel group, which is fighting Somalia's
Western-backed government and wants to impose its harsh version of sharia
law across that country, had no idea who was responsible for uploading it to
the internet.
And he said that al Shabaab's reclusive leader Ahmed Abdi Godane -- also
known as Sheik Mukhtar Abdirahman Abu Zubeyr -- had not spoken to the media
in the last three months.
"So how did he threaten to Kenya?" the spokesman asked.
The Kenyan police crackdown followed the violent protest against the
detention of Jamaican cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, who was jailed in
Britain for urging his audiences to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners.
Many of the marchers were Somalis and some waved a black flag identified
with al Shabaab. On Thursday, Kenya said it had deported Faisal to Jamaica
aboard a private Gulfstream jet. (Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Giles
Elgood)
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
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