Kenya/Somalia: Recruiting fighters

By on April 5, 2010
Al-Shabaab has declared holy war on Kenya over reports that Nairobi is training Somali troops. But the latter denied its involvement in the training of Somali soldiers, saying it has nothing to do with the Somali issues. As it has denied reports for the UN that many of its citizens are fighting with Somalia’s al-Shabab militants.

A report to the UN Security Council said leaders of the al-Qaeda-inspired group regularly travelled to Nairobi to raise funds and recruit fighters.
The Kenyan senior official at the internal security ministry, Mr Kimemia declared that all this is propaganda and that any al-Shabab leaders who passed through Nairobi would be arrested.
He also said Kenya is home to many thousands of Somali refugees, and also has a large ethnic Somali population. Kenyan authorities were closely watching the country’s mosques in case clerics sympathetic to al-Shabab were using them to radicalise young Kenyans and Somali refugees, as alleged by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia.

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