North Eastern leaders have said that they will begin to identify, document and expose all the members, financiers and sympathizers of Al Shabaab within the next one month.
Speaking on behalf of the leaders, Majority Leader in the National Assembly Adan Duale said the Garissa University terror attackers are not Muslims and do not represent Muslims adding that they will do everything in their power to expose and eliminate them.
The leaders who spoke on Monday after holding a meeting in Nairobi will also undertake a review of all personalities and institutions involved in religious activities that include mosques, madrasas, duskis and other institutions pointing out that they may have had some role in radicalization of the youth to join the Al Shabaab sect.
The leaders have also demanded for the immediate closure and orderly relocation of refugee camps in the region.
“Intelligence provides that the refugee camps in northern Kenya are the centres where the training, the coordination, the assembling of terror networks takes place. These refugees should be relocated across the border UNHCR can still facilitate them when there, they have been with us for twenty years, time has come when the national security of our people comes first,” Duale said.
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“We are aware that some of our youth have fallen victim to the evil ideology of Al Shabaab. To tackle this we will embark on an immediate massive and sustained campaign to win back the hearts and minds of the youth, “he said.
The leaders have reaffirmed strong support of the deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces in Somalia and urged the government to engage the international community and AMISOM in deploying KDF in all sectors along the Kenya Somalia border.
“We proclaim our unwavering commitment to stand with our Government and our compatriots in condemning and confronting this evil and barbaric ideology that has led to the heart rending loss of so many young innocent and promising Kenyans,” he said.
The leaders pledge Sh15 million to assist the bereaved families in the burial arrangements.
Other measures the leaders implement include campaigns against Al Shabaab through all platforms and media outlets and to the wider Somalia community.
Kenya authorities have named one of the gunmen who killed 148 people in a university massacre as an ethnic Somali Kenyan national and law graduate, highlighting the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab’s ability to recruit within the country.
Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said high-flying Abdirahim Abdullahi was “a university of Nairobi law graduate and described by a person who knows him well as a brilliant upcoming lawyer”.
The spokesman said Abdullahi’s father, a local official in the north-eastern county of Mandera, had “reported to the authorities that his son had gone missing and suspected the boy had gone to Somalia”.
President Kenyatta warned that his government will respond to terror and terrorists in the “severest way never seen before”.
The Head of State blamed the continued terrorist activities to lack of cooperation from the community which fail to provide information to security forces, leading to senseless killings like the one that occurred in Garissa on Thursday.
“It is a fact that our task of countering terrorism work has been made all the more difficult because the planners and financiers are deeply embedded in the communities and were seen as ordinary harmless people. We will not allow them to continue their lives as normal,” he said, vowing that “The full force of the law will be applied with even greater intensity than has been the case previously.”
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