Grenades ‘come in fish baskets’

One of the four grenades bought by the Nation reporters. Photo/ALPHONCE SHIUNDU 

By NATION REPORTER
Posted Sunday, March 20 2011 at 21:10

Just two days before the December 20, 2010, blast on a Kampala-bound bus in Nairobi, a contact had warned of an imminent attack.

The contact familiar with terrorist operations in the region had said that Islamic militants from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab militia already had explosives from Somalia. But he did not know the targets.

When, a day later, Uganda’s police chief, Major General Kale Kayihura, issued an alert following what he called “strong indications” of an imminent attack during the festive season, I knew that the region’s security agencies had also got wind of the threat.

I called my contact but he had no additional information. The contact has been in Kenya’s al-Shabaab circles since his recruitment in 2007.

That evening, a grenade exploded outside a Kampala-bound bus in Nairobi, just as the Kampala Coach officials conducted a search on boarding passengers. Three people died and 41 were injured.

The following day, the contact called and said that he knew how the grenades came into Kenya and that he could help me retrace the trail of the grenades that exploded outside Kampala Coach, just to show how “easy” smuggling was.

On December 27, the long journey began. It was to take four days; it took 36. The easiest route to bring in the Russian-made F1 grenades from Somalia, the contact said, was through Kenya’s porous coastline.

He informed us that a Mombasa-based cleric had bought a boat that operates between Lamu and Somalia’s Mdoa.

The cleric registered the boat in the name of a young man who was recruited in 2008 to join the radical Islamic militia, which operates from Somalia.

He also revealed that Abu Mansour, said to be a key financier of the al-Shabaab militia, had released funds for the purchase of the boat.
Government sources familiar with the investigations corroborated this information.

In the 14 days that we spent in Lamu, the boat left once for Somalia with the registered owner using forged papers.

The sailing records at the Lamu Port show that the boat left Somalia on December 9. It sailed from Ras Kiamboni, right past the naval base on the Kenya-Somalia border in Kiunga, and into Kenya.

Officially, the boat was loaded with fish. But also in the fishing baskets were deadly grenades, referred to in the militants’ circles as “maembe” (Kiswahili for “mangoes”).

A day later, the grenades left Lamu, by road, passing seven permanent roadblocks.

An al-Shabaab pointman told us the “charges”, read bribes, for the fish trucks at each roadblock were Sh50 during the day and Sh100 at night.

The trail then led to Nairobi’s Eastleigh. A few days later, 35-year-old Albert Olando Mulanda, a Tanzanian, dropped a grenade just before he boarded a bus to Kampala. Police said he died in the explosion.

Two people, Aboud Rogo and Abubakar Sharrif, have been charged over the matter.