Kilifi man arrested en route to join Islamic State
A terror suspect was on Monday charged with three counts of terrorism at the anti-terrorism court in Kahawa.
The suspect, Shida Jacob Msanzu alias Mujahideen Yaqub, was arrested by Tanzanian authorities as he trying to cross into to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to join Daesh (Islamic State).
Msanzu was charged with being a munasireen, a member and a fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham terrorist groups).
He was also charged with being in possession of a mobile phone which contained terror-related videos. He is suspected to have collected the terror-related information on or before April 3. Police believe the materials were meant for use to commit a terrorism act.
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In the third count, Msanzu was charged with possession of articles connected with the commission of a terrorism act.
He denied the charges before Senior Principal Magistrate Boaz Ombewa and was denied bail on grounds that he is a flight risk, a repeat offender and the gravity of the charges.
The 28-year-old suspect travelled to Tanzania on December 28 last year and was arrested while enroute to DRC on April 3, 2023.
He was deported to Kenya on April 10 and arraigned at the Kahawa Law Courts on April 17.
On that day, the court allowed ATPU to detain him for five days.
This was not the first run in with the law for Msanzu. He had been arrested on May 26, 2019 by a multi-agency team in Takaungu Vuma area in Kilifi County on claims of promoting Al-Shabaab ideologies via the Internet.
He was arraigned at the Malindi Law Courts and charged with four counts of terror-related offences including radicalisation, possession of articles connected to the commission of a terror act, collection of information for Al-Shabaab and being a member of a terror group.
He was however acquitted on December 29 and he fled to Tanzania to join ISCAP, a terror group affiliated with ISIS operating in DRC and Mozambique.
According to police records, Msanzu grew up in Kilifi and acquired his basic education at Vuma Primary School.
He later joined Kwajuni Polytechnic where he studied electrical courses up to grade three.
Later he attended Majlis Maarifaa Madrassa in Kikambala Kilifi County before he began sharing radical content through his Facebook account where he sought to influence his followers to join terror groups and travel to Somalia.
In the recent past, cases of Kenyans crossing the borders to join ADF have been on the increase.
In January this year, Congolese authorities arrested 29-year-old Abdirizak Muktar Garad from Wajir county on suspicion of being a member of the Ugandan terrorist group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) that masterminded the attack on a church in North Kivu that left 10 people dead.
The incident in Kasindi, North Kivu left at least 39 others injured according to the local army FARDC.
Another Kenyan named Salim Rashid Mohamed aka Chotara was also arrested in DRC in January following months of hunting by Congolese authorities.
Salim who joined ADF years ago had fled Kenya after he was released twice by a local court. He is reported to have risen in ranks to become the group’s chief beheader, acts that he shared on social media.
Local authorities had placed a sh10M bounty on his head since 2021 with the DCI publishing his images on Twitter citing him as armed and dangerous adding that he was planning to sneak back to Kenya to launch a series of attacks.
On Friday, Brigadier (Rtd) Jossiah Mrashui, the Kenyan Consular General in Goma was non-committal on whether the terror suspects arrested in Goma, Eastern DRC would be repatriated to Kenya without conclusion of relevant security processes in the region.
“Terrorism is a threat not only to Congo but to all the neighborhoods and therefore it is very important that the investigations are done conclusively and the security processes are concluded…that incident in Kasindi was a terrorist incident and therefore investigations are still going on and once they are completed, we shall be informed and the necessary tasks that are supposed to be undertaken will be undertaken,” he said. BY DAILY NATION
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