Countering Terrorism in East Africa: The U.S. Response

New CRS report which provides an overview of current U.S. counterterrorism assistance programs and influence operations in East Africa and explores some of the strategies underpinning them. It also provides a brief description of the evolving terrorist threat in the region.

Kenyan minister seeks to ease tensions over renditions

(Reuters) Kenya’s justice minister told Muslim leaders that rendition of bomb suspects to Uganda was illegal, seeking to allay fears within a community that fears being increasingly targeted by security agents. Mutula Kilonzo said the transfers, which have angered many Kenyans, violated the east African nation’s constitution. Kilonzo blames Kenya’s attorney general, whose office has [...]

Uganda: Terror Charges Against Pakistanis Dismissed

On September 23, 2010, in Uganda, the Nakawa Chief Magistrates Court released two men from Pakistan who had been in custody in the case of the July 11, 2010, bombings in Kampala. Seventy-six people died and many others were injured in the bombing during a World Cup soccer match. The two men were Shaykh Zamir [...]

Kenya defends arrests over Uganda World Cup bombing

Kenyan authorities have defended the rendition of suspects to Uganda for trial over July’s bombings, by leaking documents alleging their terror links.The documents, published by Kenyan media, describe an al-Qaeda cell in East Africa and provide details of how the Kampala attack was planned. They say that “tens of youths” from across Kenya have joined [...]

Radicalisation in Kenya

The Washington Post has an interesting article on Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood, where the Somali immigrant community lives. Eastleigh, community leaders say, is an ideal breeding ground for radicalism. The neighborhood is poor and isolated; few Kenyans enter it. Local authorities have ignored it: Roads are unpaved, muddy and covered with trash. The smell of raw [...]

Kenya accused of illegally transferring 4 terrorist suspects

Kenya secretly sent four terrorism suspects to Uganda after the World Cup bomb blasts in violation of Kenyan law, and FBI agents interrogated three of them in a manner that broke Ugandan law, human rights officials say. The officials said that Kenya circumvented its own extradition laws to send the four suspects to Uganda, where [...]

Kenya torture victims get compensation payment

Kenyan judges have awarded 21 former political prisoners almost $500,000 (£330,000) between them in compensation for torture they suffered in the 1980s, the BBC said. They were among hundreds of people who were illegally detained and tortured during the government of President Daniel Arap Moi, who retired in 2002. His government always denied torture, but [...]

Free Kenyan detainee from Guantanamo should face trial in Kenya

A Kenyan man detained for three years without charge at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo should face trial in Kenya instead of being held indefinitely at the U.S. facility, his government-appointed attorney said. Darin Thompson, an assistant federal public defender said his client, Mohamed Abdulmalik, should be repatriated to face trial over his alleged [...]

Australian terrorist suspect disappears in military intelligence detention in Uganda

Hashi Hussein Farah and “a dozen others”, were arrested by the Joint Anti-terrorism Taskforce (JATT) in Kisenyi slum in the capital Kampala, Uganda, allegedly on the 1st of April. He was paraded on television later in the evening. The terror suspects were taken away by the anti-terrorism squad for further interrogation to an unknown place [...]

UN experts conclude major study into use of secret detention in the fight against terrorism

Despite the fact that international law clearly prohibits secret detention, the practice is widespread and “reinvigorated” by the so-called global war on terror, several independent United Nations experts stated, outlining a series of steps aimed at curbing this human rights violation. In a 222-page study which will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights [...]