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The United States on Tuesday blacklisted the leader of an elite Al-Shabaab unit who was blamed for a January attack in Kenya that killed three Americans.
The State Department said it included Maalim Ayman, leader of Al-Shabaab’s Jaysh Ayman squad, as well as Abdullahi Osman Mohamed, who administers both explosives and media for the Al-Qaeda-linked movement as a whole, as Global Specially Designated. . Terrorists.
Authorities say the Jaysh Ayman unit carried out the January attack on Camp Simba on Kenya’s north coast, killing three US personnel and destroying several aircraft.
A 2018 study by the Jamestown Foundation described Jaysh Ayman as an effort by Somalia-based Al-Shabaab to create a well-equipped “local” unit within Kenya.
Kenya has suffered a series of devastating attacks since sending troops to Somalia in 2011 as part of an African Union mission that drove Al-Shabaab out of the capital, Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab, designated by Washington as a terrorist movement in 2008, was suspected of another suicide attack Tuesday at a Mogadishu restaurant that killed at least five people.
Nathan Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, said the United States was working with Kenya, Somalia and other nations to apply “all instruments of national power” against Al-Shabaab.
The designation freezes any assets that people may have in the United States and makes it a crime to help them.
“Whether or not they have assets in the United States, the sanctions have very powerful secondary consequences because it makes it much more difficult for designated individuals or organizations to move money in the international financial system,” Sales told reporters.
