Kenyan Senate staff in terror plot claims finally set free

NAIROBI: A Senate employee held over allegations of planning to bomb Parliament Buildings was set free Monday by the trial court.

Ali Abdul Majid Ahmed, an assistant Hansard editor at the Senate, was however ordered by the magistrate’s court to be reporting at the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) headquarters every Friday.

Milimani Resident Magistrate Edda Agade also ordered the release of Ahmed’s mobile phone, which the prosecutor wanted left with the police, within 24 hours and the Sh100,000 that had been deposited to secure release on bail.

“In the prevailing circumstances, I have instructions to close the file and the court is at liberty to make its decision,” prosecutor Dancun Ondimu told the court.

The magistrate made the decision after the expiry of the deadline that the court had given ATPU detectives to charge Ahmed or set him free.

Ahmed was arrested and put in police custody on April 20 after he presented himself to Pangani Police Station, upon being summoned via a phone call.

Police had alleged that Ahmed was an Al Shabaab link-man on a mission to assist terrorists attack Parliament buildings. An affidavit presented before the magistrate stated that intelligence reports had linked the suspect to questionable activities. “He is considered a threat to the security of this country taking into account the mayhem terrorism has caused before,” reads the affidavit filed in court by the police.

Ondimu told the court the prosecution was not opposed to Ahmed’s release. However, he said, police are still conducting investigations over his activities.

“The number of days sought by the prosecution have expired and my client ought to be released since it is his constitutional right,” the suspect’s lawyer Mbugua Mureithi told the court, adding that the police had not filed any progress report over the investigations they had so far carried out.

He told the court the United Nations Report published in 2013, which linked Ahmed with Al Shabaab, has never been acted on by the police, adding that the suspect offered himself including writing to the former Commissioner of Police Mathew Iteere, asking him to conduct investigations over the allegations contained in the report.

Mureithi dismissed the allegation that the suspect was arrested at Pangani, Nairobi, saying his client presented himself to the police after they called him.

Mureithi said this was not the first time Ahmed was being set free as he had earlier been accused of having links to terror-related activities, citing 2011, when he was investigated and ‘cleared’.