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the Daily maverick, a South African online newspaper, recently published a two-part series by UK declassified, an online investigative outlet, on the role of the US and UK intelligence services in Kenya’s ongoing and highly abusive counterterrorism campaign. While some of the allegations go beyond those documented by human rights organizations in recent years, the cases highlight an underlying problem: the dangerous lack of transparency in foreign support for Kenya’s counterterrorism campaign.
Kenya has for years faced criticism from human rights groups and some partner countries for its abusive counterterrorism campaign, a response to numerous terrorist attacks, some of them for many years. Since the 1998 al-Qaeda bomb attack on the US embassies in Nairobi and in neighboring Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and the 2002 missile attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, also suspected of Being al-Qaeda, Kenya’s role has steadily grown as a strategic partner of the United States and other Western countries in the fight against terrorism in the East and the Horn of Africa.
The rise of al-Shabaab, an armed Islamist group based in neighboring Somalia that has carried out a series of deadly attacks and kidnappings of tourists in Kenya over the past decade, has cemented Kenya’s regional importance in this effort. The al-Shabaab attacks include the one at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in September 2013, in which at least 68 people were killed. This was followed by a series of firearm and grenade attacks in Mpeketoni, Lamu County, in June 2014, in which 87 were killed, and an attack on Garissa University in April 2015, in which died 148.
Last January, al-Shabaab attacked a military base housing US troops at Manda Bay in the Kenyan coastal city of Lamu, killing three US security officers. Subsequently, the US military is seeking authority to carry out drone strikes, with the consent of Kenya, against suspected al-Shabaab militants in certain areas of Kenya if necessary in the future, according to the New York Times.
Responses to abuse of rights
Kenya’s own response to these and other attacks has been marred by serious abuses, including torture, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances. These abuses have been well documented by human rights organizations and, in some cases, by government institutions. But the Kenyan authorities have done little to investigate them or to ensure that those responsible are held accountable. And Kenya’s international partners, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have not pushed Kenya enough to investigate these violations.
the Daily Maverick / UK Declassified The series alleges that the US and UK secret services are at the center of these abusive operations. If true, it would compromise the ability of these countries to press for accountability for abuses by security forces in Kenya. The series alleges that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is not only funding a special counterterrorism unit called the Rapid Response Team (RRT), but has also been behind the establishment, training, and arming of the force. . The RRT is made up of about 60 officers from Kenya’s paramilitary police unit, the General Services Unit (GSU).
The series says that Britain’s CIA and MI6, in some cases supported by the Israeli Mossad, have been making some of the counterterrorism decisions in Kenya. The articles cited interviews with unidentified former US government officials, including in intelligence, as well as with Kenyan police officers and relatives of unidentified victims. The media say the evidence indicates that the RRT is responsible for some of the most controversial and highest-profile killings of terrorism suspects. The governments of Kenya, the United States and the United Kingdom did not officially respond to UK declassified questions.
But Kenyan and international human rights organizations that have documented these operations in the past have found that they are more complex and involve more Kenyan security units than Daily maverick Y UK declassified suggest.
In 2016, for example, Human Rights Watch documented at least 11 deaths and 34 cases of enforced disappearance of people suspected of having ties to terrorist groups. At the time, we discovered that operations were often carried out by a team of officers from multiple units, including the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU), the GSU, the administrative police, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the military intelligence. . The high-profile killings of at least three Muslim clerics in Mombasa between 2012 and 2014 are likely to have been carried out by a more skilled unit.
The cases we investigated at the time included those of Abdiwelli Ibrahim Sheikh and Faisal Mohamed Ibrahim, who have disappeared since they were arrested in March 2015 from their homes in the city of Mandera, near Kenya’s borders with Somalia and Ethiopia, and taken to the Mandera military camp. . We discovered that some of those who arrested them were driving an armored military vehicle. In another case, the whereabouts of Omar Yusuf Mohamed have been unknown since April 2015, when he was detained in a restaurant by several plainclothes security officers. But witnesses said they recognized three as recognized officers from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and the ATPU.
Western financing – and what else?
In its investigation a few years ago, Human Rights Watch found that the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union were funding Kenya’s counterterrorism campaign, but the extent of their involvement in actual operations has not been clear. In a case more than a decade ago, a team of security agents arrested terrorism suspects in Kenya and Somalia and brought them to the United States. The victims of that operation told Human Rights Watch in 2008 that among those who questioned them after the arrests in Kenya and Somalia were intelligence officials from the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.
There has been little recent evidence to suggest that these countries have been more involved beyond providing technical and financial support. But given the questions posed in the UK declassified investigation, it is imperative and urgent that the three countries clarify their functions.
Human Rights Watch documented these killings and called on donors for supporting the ATPU and abusive units and for failing to take meaningful action to stop their abuses. The accusations of Daily Maverick / UK Declassified The series don’t change that, but they bring renewed urgency to the call. And if true, the cases further highlight the double talk of the United States and the United Kingdom about responsibility for abuses by security forces in Kenya. These governments and their legislators should investigate complaints, be more transparent about the nature of their support, and ensure that they are not aiding or inciting unlawful killings and other abuses.
IMAGE: A member of the Kenyan Defense Forces boards a truck carrying the Kenyan Police as it enters the university campus in the northeastern city of Garissa on April 3, 2015, a day after 147 people, mostly students were killed when Somalia’s Islamist group al-Shabaab attacked the university. The day-long siege of Garissa University was Kenya’s deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, and the bloodiest ever by al-Qaeda-affiliated militants. (Photo by CARL DE SOUZA / AFP via Getty Images)
