Terror suspect Grant arrives in UK after deportation

Suspected British terrorist Jermain Grant has arrived in the UK after he was deported.

Grant was on Wednesday deported to his home country after completing his nine-year jail term in Kenya.

A British Government Spokesperson said Grant arrived in the UK on Thursday after his sentence for nine accounts of being in possession of bomb-making materials and forgery in the Kenya court.

Initially, it had been reported that Grant’s whereabouts remained unclear after the British High Commission denied reports by Kenyan authorities that it had handed him over.

Although Prison authorities said Grant had been handed over to Immigration officials to arrange for his repatriation after he was declared an unwanted immigrant, the High Commission had said the convict charged with plotting to bomb a beach hotel frequented by British and American tourists and forging Kenyan citizenship was still being held by the Kenyan authorities.

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Grant, an accomplice of the most wanted British fugitive linked to multiple terror attacks in Lamu Samantha Lewthwaite (also known as the White Widow), completed his nine-year jail term yesterday.

He was in 2011 charged with plotting to bomb a beach hotel frequented by British and American tourists and forging Kenyan citizenship.

In July last year, Justice Anne Onginjo directed the government to repatriate Grant to the UK upon completion of his jail term at the Kamiti Maximum Prison.

On Wednesday, there was confusion after British Spokesperson said that Grant was still in the hands of Kenyan authority despite a court order directing his deportation.

“Kenyan authorities can speak about the repatriation of Jermain Grant. He is still detained in the country,” said the spokesperson who did not wish to be named.

However, the prison authorities in Kenya insisted that Grant had been handed over to Immigration officials to arrange for his repatriation after he was declared an unwanted immigrant.

Grant’s lawyer Mwita Chacha, who did not oppose the decision by the court, did not pick up phone calls or reply to text messages.

A source confided to The Standard that Grant was to be escorted to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport by anti-terror police and Immigration officials as he was a dangerous man.

“Grant’s air ticket and the police officers who were to escort him to the UK were purchased,” said a senior Prisons officer.

Sources in the anti-terror police unit said would be handed over to the British counter-terrorism officers. But as we went to press, it was not clear if he was still at the airport or Kamiti.

Grant was arrested along with Faud Abubakar on a motorcycle. At his residence in Kishada in Kisauni, Mombasa, police found Lewthwaite in another room of the same apartment with her children. It is still unclear how Lewthwaite escaped arrest.

The police also found Warda Ismail Brek in Grant’s room, who introduced herself as his wife. During the search of the house, the police found chemicals and other materials for making a bomb.

After his arrest, Grant first disguised himself as Joseph, a Canadian, but later opened up to detectives at the Makupa Police Station.

“Grant revealed his British nationality after being served with a special meal of fried chicken and potatoes in the Kenyan police custody during his questioning,” said a detective who offered Grant a soft drink at the station.

A British detective testified that the chemicals could make a bomb capable of bringing down a storey house.

He was charged alongside with Abubakar, Brek, and Frank Ngala, a taxi driver who had communicated with him on December 20, 2011.

Brek and Ngala were acquitted after the prosecution failed to link them to the offence.

Abubakar is said to have absconded bond and fled to Somalia.

Grant was charged with nine counts. In 2015, Justice Martin Muya quashed the lower court’s decision to acquit him of the nine charges and sentenced him to one year each for each charge, which ran consecutively.

The police have linked him to Samantha, who was married to Germaine Lindsey, one of the four suicide bombers who carried out a suicide attack on a train in London on July 7, 2005, which left 26 passengers dead.

He has previously served a two-year term for illegal entry into the country and was acquitted of a robbery charge about 10 years ago in a Nairobi court.

In June 2009, Islamist militants from Somalia raided the Dadajabulla Police Post in Wajir and attempted to rescue him.

This story has been updated to reflect the recent development