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Ahmed Abdullahi faults police for killing US embassy attacker
Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdullahi has urged police and other agencies to investigate last week’s shooting of a terror suspect from his county outside the US Embassy in Gigiri, Nairobi.
The governor said the man, who allegedly stabbed a GSU officer, should have been disarmed and arrested to help with investigations instead of being shot dead.
“Police and the parties concerned should come clean and show the public what actually happened,” he said during a fundraiser at Baraza Park in Wajir Town on Sunday.
“What kind of knife was it that it scared everyone to the point that they ended up shooting him. It is difficult for us to believe that indeed that boy was a terrorist.”
He likened the killing to that of three women in Mombasa who were said to have attacked a police station.
ISIS LINK
“We urge police and all the parties concerned to tell the public what actually happened. There are CCTV cameras outside the embassy. It is difficult for the common mwananchi (citizen) to believe what they said,” he said.
The so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist group has since claimed the attack, which prompted US officials to close the embassy on Friday. IS group said the attacker was following its instructions.
“The person who carried out the stabbing of a guard outside the American embassy in Nairobi last Thursday was a soldier of Islamic State responding to calls to target coalition countries,” ISIS said on Saturday in a statement on its Amaq news outlet.
Mr Abdullahi said unnecessary killings without investigation were driving more young people to join terror groups, especially the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab.
FORCIBLE ACCESS
He said northeastern leaders were ready to work with the central government to fight terrorism.
Police said the the attacker forcibly tried to access the embassy on Thursday and when stopped, he drew out a knife and stabbed the officer on the head and hand before the was shot dead.
The slain suspect’s identity was not revealed to the public, although Gigiri police chief Vitalis Otieno said he was a resident of Wajir County.
Kenya Police are also investigating whether ISIS was behind the foiled attack at a police station in Mombasa on September 10 that saw the assailants, three women, killed.
Source: Daily Nation
