How foiled Coast terror attack was to be executed

By Willis Oketch, Benard Sanga and Philip Mwakio

Mombasa, Kenya: The insurance policy for the bomb-laden car discovered in Mombasa last week was supposed to expire on March 16, the day intelligence officials say a terrorist attack on Moi International Airport was to take place.

Reports show US and Kenyan investigators now believe that Al-Qaeda and its affiliates planned an attack on the airport in the early hours of March 16, targeting German and Israeli chartered flights carrying Western and Jewish tourists and executives, using a car bomb.

Yesterday, police reported that the six pipe bombs retrieved from the car contained 173 kilogrammes of TNT, most likely procured from Middle Eastern nations through Somalia.

The joint Kenya-US probe on suspects is zeroing in on the people behind the one-month policy bought on February 17 this year and was set for expiry in 30 days.

“We can confirm that the vehicle’s insurance cover was expiring on March 16,” Mombasa County police commander Robert Kitur told The Standard. Kitur said detectives now want to know who sold or brokered the one-month third party policy.

The police commander did not indicate where the cover was sold but suggested that detectives now believe there is a link between the end of the cover and the date of the planned terror attack.

Meanwhile, multiple intelligence sources close to the investigation yesterday disclosed that the probe was now based on growing proof that the suspects in custody lived in several houses in Mombasa and received money from suspected financiers of the terror plot.

According to an official who requested anonymity, the two suspects in police custody were part of a larger gang involved in the scheme.

The suspects had been deployed to deliver the car to a second team that was to launch the raid on the airport but were arrested by Kenya police on a customs offence on March 11 before accomplishing their mission.

Booby-trapped

Meanwhile, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Communication Intelligence Unit that was visiting Kinango on a separate counter-terrorism mission accidentally picked a signal from the booby-trapped car parked at the Mombasa police headquarters on March 17.

The FBI team was on a routine meeting with Kenyan officials at the former provincial headquarters, a few metres from the police headquarters where the car was parked.

Now analysts believe the insurance policy suggests that the plotters behind the explosives planned a terrorist attack between March 11 and March 16.

“From our projections, the terrorists were planning a major operation against the airport between the day they were arrested and March 16 when the insurance cover was ending,” an official who asked not to be named told The Standard.

Preliminary reports suggest that the car was to be driven by at least four people from the garage in Magongo in Changamwe to the airport, less than a kilometre away.

Two insurgents were to storm the airport entrance at around 3am when international flights arrive, in a rapid grenade and gun attack as the driver of the booby-trapped car drove through the main gate onto the tarmac for international flights.

“They expected some resistance from airport security but they appear to believe that security around 3am is lax, although that is the time when most international flights arrive at the airport,” the official said.

Yesterday, bomb disposal experts successfully detonated the explosives at a disused limestone quarry in Kilifi County.

The impact of the explosion was so great that it formed a huge crater hole measuring 12 feet by 4 feet deep with water gushing from underground aquifers.

Utmost success

Experts drawn from the Kenya Police, Navy and FBI carried out the exercise at the Bamburi North Quarry in Mtwapa, 30 km from Mombasa city.

Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa said the weight of the six pipe bombs was 173 kilogrammes, with the largest, which was retrieved from the vehicle’s dashboard weighing 51 kilogrammes.

“We have carried out this operation with utmost success. Let all those bent on inciting insecurity be warned that we are on the alert and the Government is at all times ready to face them,” said Marwa.

He was flanked by Mombasa Deputy Governor Hazel Katana, Mombasa County Police Commander Robert Kitur, Head of Kenya Airports Authority security Eric Kiraithe and Mombasa County Disaster Committee Chairman Nahid Musa.

A police car with sirens blazing led the convoy of vehicles from the Coast regional police headquarters to the detonation site.