How Tanzanian security services saved Kenya from elections day terror attack
British Terror Suspect Jermaine Grant (left) at the Mombasa Law Courts on May 9, 2019.
A sinister plot against Kenya and a plan to assassinate a law enforcement officer were underway at Shimo la Tewa prison in Mombasa. Thabit Jamaldin Yahya, alias Bobby, and his associate Jermaine John Grant, who had been imprisoned for terrorist attacks in the country were plotting their revenge.
The two separate but interlinked plots to assassinate an Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) investigating officer and destabilise the March 2013 General Election were initiated in 2012.
Abubakar Shariff Ahmed, alias Makaburi, a radical Muslim cleric, was directing the planning of the attacks from the outside. The UN had listed Makaburi as a recruiter for the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab group.
Also monitoring the development from Somalia was Ahmad Iman, the Al Hijra ‘Amir’ and Al-Shabaab’s official representative for Kenya. Iman, a preacher in Nairobi who had fled to Somalia in 2009, had formed Al Hijra out of the Muslim Youth Centre (MYC).
MYC had recruited its followers from Majengo, Nairobi, and the port city of Mombasa. In Coast, Al Hijra was led by Sheikh Aboud Rogo Mohammed. Rogo, its ideological leader, was inexplicably killed in Mombasa on August 27, 2012, a month after the UN Security Council Committee designated him for targeted measures.
The ATPU investigating officer was to be killed for a number of Al-Shabaab-related trials in Mombasa, including the case of Thabit. On October 16, 2012, Thabit and Grant, while in remand at Shimo la Tewa prison, telephoned a female Al Hijra member in Nairobi.
Female members
The initial discussion centred on ‘jihad’ and the possibility of female members travelling to Somalia, according to classified security documents Kenya submitted to the International Court of Justice last year during the hearing of a maritime boundary dispute with Somalia. But a series of subsequent visits to Shimo la Tewa prison became the basis for the initial planning stages of the plot to assassinate the ATPU officer, known to the Monitoring Group as officer “X”.
Thabit Jamaldin Yahya leaves a Mombasa court in March 2016 after he was sentenced to death for a terrorist attack.
“Since November 2012, the Monitoring Group was regularly briefed, indirectly by Al Hijra members in prison in Mombasa and serving Al Hijra members based in Nairobi, on two separate but interlinked plots that were largely directed by Makaburi and monitored from Somalia by Ahmad Iman,” reads the report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea pursuant to a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution in 2013. Apart from the assassination plot, there was also “a plan to procure explosives in Tanzania for transportation to Kenya for an attack initially scheduled around the time of the Kenyan elections”, according to extracts from the report, which was filed with the UNSC in October 2014.
“The above plots mark a higher level of planning and coordination between Al-Shabaab in Somalia and its regional affiliates both in Kenya and Tanzania in planning to carry out violent attacks and may signify a new alarming trend,” the report cautioned.
Al Hijra female courier
A week later on November 21, 2012, a key Al Hijra female courier, “R”, and a Kenyan lawyer met with Thabit. The Monitoring Group obtained the original “instruction notes” of this meeting. Thabit and the lawyer informed “R” that Makaburi had requested the assistance of Al Hijra in procuring three ‘kids’ (firearms).
The firearms would be used in an operation that would later be explained to “R” and other Al Hijra members. In order to begin communicating “securely” with Thabit and others in Shimo la Tewa prison, as well as with Makaburi’s interlocutors, “R” was given a set of codes.
On returning to Nairobi on November 22, 2012, “R” received a coded message from Thabit on behalf of Makaburi. The translation was: That ATPU [officer] should be finished [killed]. According to “R”, days later, Thabit called from Shimo la Tewa prison requesting her to contact a close associate named “Jah Rule”, who would facilitate the acquisition of three ‘kids’ (firearms) to be used in Makaburi’s operation to assassinate officer “X”.
Though a criminal in Nairobi, Jah Rule was not a member of Al-Shabaab or Al Hijra. According to “R” and confirmed by Makaburi, during a subsequent operational meeting in Mombasa, once Jah Rule had helped procure the firearms, they would be transferred to Makaburi in Mombasa either by “R” or another person known to the Monitoring Group as “Jembe”.
Sense of urgency
On December 17, 2012 in Mombasa, Makaburi met with some of his co-conspirators, including “R”, the lawyer and “Jembe”, to offer his thoughts on the plot. During the meeting, Makaburi revealed the plot to assassinate officer “X” was indeed his plan and not Thabit’s as some of them believed.
Makaburi told his guests that officer “X”’s house in Mombasa had been identified and was under surveillance. But he noted the target’s pattern of movements had changed, indicating officer “X” may have been aware of a plot against him.
British terror suspect Jermaine Grant (left) escorted to prison after being sentenced at Mombasa Law Courts on May 9, 2019.
As the planning progressed into January 2013, a sense of urgency became apparent when Thabit and Makaburi opted to pursue a “plan B” on procuring the three firearms required for the assassination. Jah Rule had become unreachable during this period. However, on January 1, 2013 at 5:59pm, Thabit, from prison, contacted a female Al Hijra member, who had regular access to Iman in Somalia via phone. He informed her that an alternative plan was being pursued with another local criminal known as “Doctor”.
“If it works we will go with the Doctor,” the report quotes Thabit telling the confidential source during a ‘secure phone’ discussion. The audio recording is archived with the United Nations.
It shows that on January 27, 2013, a senior Al Hijra member, Ibrahim Ramadan Hamisi, alias Ruta, had met Makaburi, who had tasked him to return to Nairobi to procure a consignment of AK-47s to be used in another related plot that appears to have had the backing of Al-Shabaab.
By February 6, 2013, Ruta, during a meeting on the logistics of the weapons that would by now have been procured from Garissa, could be heard in an audio recording accessed by the Monitoring Group that despite his current court case he “will continue with his activities [acting on behalf of Al-Shabaab] whether they [government of Kenya] like it or not”.
On February 15, 2013, a female courier received a message from Al Hijra fighters in Tanga confirming they had identified explosives that would then need to be transported back to Makaburi in Kenya.
According to the Monitoring Group, throughout the initial planning stages of the operation to transport explosives into Kenya, there had been no substantive discussions on potential targets or the use of the explosives until February 16, 2013, at least to the knowledge of the Al Hijra female courier cell.
However, the Monitoring Group reported that the Kenyan lawyer appears to have had foreknowledge of potential targets. The lawyer had also been receiving bomb-making instructions from Grant during their meetings to be passed on to Makaburi, the report claims. On February 23, 2013, in a meeting in Mombasa to discuss a related and more daring plot by Makaburi and Al Hijra members to transfer explosives into Kenya, Makaburi met with both “R” and Ruta.
Transporting explosives
Information received by the Monitoring Group from a confidential source present at the meeting described Makaburi’s update on the ATPU plot. Makaburi still intended to continue with the plot and had been looking for someone to execute the plan, but he had also discovered that officer “X” had recently moved to a new a residence.
By February 25, 2013, the female couriers had arrived in Tanga and the following day began cross briefing with the Al Hijra fighters at the safe house on transporting Makaburi’s explosives into Kenya. A three-hour audio recording of a discussion on February 26, 2013, at the safe house indicated Al Hijra fighters “Rashid” and Athman Ahmed alias Mwarabu were confident that the explosives would successfully be transported to Kenya. From December 2012 to March 1, 2013, the Monitoring Group closely monitored the movements of a number of Al Hijra fighters retreating from Kenya to regroup in Tanzania and close to the Ugandan border. One such fighter was “Rashid”, who had assumed the Tanzanian name of Jacob Mtunzi Rwakatale.
Sheikh Abubakar Shariff alias Makaburi when he appeared before a Mombasa court on March 27, 2014.
If unable to obtain TNT from Tanga, the Al Hijra fighters claimed during the audio recording that Makaburi would have to resort to a consignment hidden in Mombasa.
However, in Kenya on February 25, 2013, at 5:52pm, the lawyer sent a private message via Facebook to a female Al Hijra member in Kiswahili informing the Al Hijra couriers not to attempt transporting the explosives.
On the evening of March 1, 2013, Tanzanian security services raided the Al Hijra safe house and arrested seven individuals, including Rashid and Mwarabu. The Tanzanian security services in cooperation with their Kenyan counterparts had managed to foil the operation only three days to the General Election.
“It is the Monitoring Group’s assessment that this disruption of the explosives plot in addition to Makaburi’s claim of not being able to immediately find someone to execute his assassination plot may have led to Al Hijra and Makaburi aborting the plan to assassinate officer “X”,” reads the document.
“Al Hijra’s brazen attempt to move beyond ‘soft targets’ to actively demonstrating its ability to carry out Al-Shabaab styled assassinations in the region continues to remain a worrying trend by the affiliate,” the report concludes.
