Concerns grow over militancy among Kenyan Muslims

MOMBASA, Kenya -- Six weeks after terrorists launched attacks on an Israeli hotel and airliner, information deeply troubling to Kenya and its Western allies keeps surfacing: some suspects were homegrown militants -- born, raised and radicalized in Kenya.

Investigators still believe the attacks were orchestrated from abroad, most likely by al-Qaida.

But the apparent level of Kenyan involvement has alarmed Kenyan and Western officials, who fear a community once characterized by its tolerance is becoming an incubator for radical militants.

So far, many details about the alleged assailants, who bombed a beachfront hotel popular with Israelis and fired shoulder-held missiles at the airliner, have been kept under wraps. Only one suspect has been named -- Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Mombasa native.

Unlike al-Qaida's 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which no Kenyans played a major role and in which 219 were killed, at least three Kenyans are believed to have taken part in the Nov. 28 attacks.

Four months before the bombing, investigators say, Nabhan and two other suspects, also Kenyan, moved into a spacious house in a Mombasa back street, put up thatch screens to hide the yard and curtained the windows.

Investigators believe the house, only a mile from the home of Nabhan's parents, is where the car bomb was built.

Evidence of bomb-making was found in the house, where the men lived with their wives, said Deputy Police Commissioner William Langat, the lead Kenyan investigator. He and other investigators refused to provide details.

Islamic radicalism has been spreading on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast for the last decade. But the apparent willingness of some Kenyan Muslims to work with foreign terrorists makes the longtime U.S. ally an increasing security risk, said a Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israeli officials said the suspected Kenyan involvement underscored al-Qaida's efforts to expand its presence in Africa by exploiting sympathetic local populations.

"Al-Qaida is networked all over the world and is trying to recruit cells that will have a link, even a weak one, with them," said Yonatan Peled, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official. "In the case of Kenya it's not just our concern, but the local government's .... These elements are hostile to local governments too."

Another Israeli government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel had general warnings about Kenya's Muslim minority even before the attacks.

Following the destruction of its base in Afghanistan, al-Qaida decided to shift to a decentralized and less vulnerable structure, with a significant presence of initially dormant cells in many countries, the official said.

Ideally, it targets countries with lax security, pockets of sympathizers willing to provide cover, and diplomats or representatives of other nations willing to provide such help as fake passports.

Some target countries may have governments that are friendly to Israel, as is Kenya's, but lack the means to prevent al-Qaida infiltration, the official said.

An Israeli security source, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was possible Muslims linked to al-Qaida did not always know they were working for bin Laden. Al-Qaida activists have been known to pose as representing other groups, he said.

"The bottom line," Peled said, "is that terror has many arms and many branches and many assistants."

In a recent travel advisory, the U.S. State Department warned of a continuing risk of "attacks on civilian targets ... especially in the coastal region" of Kenya.

A more specific State Department alert said there is a "threat to aircraft by terrorists using shoulder-fired missiles ... in Kenya, including Nairobi," the inland capital.

Arab merchants and slave traders brought Islam to the coast over 1,000 years ago, establishing ports such as Mombasa where African, Arab and Indian cultures mingled to create the Swahili civilization. The coast was part of the sultanate of Oman until 1963, when it was joined to Kenya, which had won independence from Britain.

Today, Kenya's Muslim population, estimated at 5 percent to 15 percent of the country's 30 million inhabitants, has long been known for its tolerance and cosmopolitan character.

But now the same factors spreading radical Islam in other parts of the world -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Internet, a looming U.S. war with Iraq -- are at work in Kenya.

Radical imams, their work financed by Gulf state money, are exacerbating tensions, the Western official said.

Khelef Khalifa, director of Muslims for Human Rights in Mombasa, said radicalism intensified after the embassy bombings, when Kenyan police working with the FBI conducted widespread raids in Muslim communities.

He was not surprised suspects in the latest attacks are Kenyan.

"People are angry here," Khalifa said. "Kenya today is not the same Kenya that existed in 1998."

Muslim anger stems in part from a sense they were neglected and at times discriminated against during the 24-year rule of former President Daniel arap Moi, whose government was dominated by Kenyans from the country's inland tribes, Khalifa said.

Last month's election of Mwai Kibaki, the main opposition presidential candidate, may help ease tensions. Kibaki has appointed Najib Balala, a prominent Mombasa politician, as culture minister and "we're hoping the new government will be more sensitive to our needs," Khalifa said.

Kenyan of Yemeni descent, Nabhan's family, like thousands of other Yemenis, has lived in East Africa for generations, said one of his sisters, a dentist who refused to give her name.

She wouldn't say much else about him, except that he was "educated," "quiet" and grew up in a well-off Mombasa neighborhood. She insisted he was not involved in the attacks.

Kenyan, Israeli and American investigators believe Nabhan bought the Mitsubishi Pajero that was packed with explosives and rammed into the lobby of the Paradise Hotel, about 12 miles north of Mombasa.

Eleven Kenyans, three Israelis and at least two bombers died. Nabhan, who was not believed to be among the dead, was reportedly seen in a small town near the Somali border in the days after the attack.

The two missiles missed an Israeli charter jet carrying tourists home to Tel Aviv.

Investigators are looking for two other men who were seen either around the hotel or the site near Mombasa airport where the missiles were fired.

Langat said there is evidence the two men may also be Kenyan, but refused to elaborate.