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Danish cartoonist attack suspect 'targeted Hillary Clinton'
The Somali man charged with the attempted murder a Danish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Mohammed had previously been arrested in Kenya over an alleged suicide terror plot targeting Hillary Clinton, it was reported on Sunday. Kenyan police are understood to have deported the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, after he was linked to plans to blow up two hotels and a bus station in the capital, Nairobi, when the US Secretary of State visited last August.

The 28-year-old was later released for lack of evidence, the Danish daily newspaper Politiken said, citing unnamed intelligence sources.

Denmark's PET intelligence agency earlier said that the man had been under observation for some time and was suspected of planning other terror attacks in Kenya.

"The person arrested. has close links with the Somali terrorist organisation al-Shabaab as well as with the heads of al-Qaeda in East Africa," the agency said in a statement. "He is also suspected of being implicated in terrorist activities when he was in east Africa. The individual arrested has also been a member of a terrorist network implanted in Denmark that has been under surveillance by PET for a long time."
I bet the person arrested has a cell phone and a computer, too. Somewhere, clever boys and girls are rubbing their hands and quietly saying, "Whee!" (hopefully not in that terrifying monotone trailing daughter #2 used to employ in the days before she got her drivers license, when driving round a corner entirely too fast for my liking.)
US diplomats in Nairobi would not confirm the alleged plot on Sunday night. Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said he had no evidence of any such attack planned during the US Secretary of State's visit to Kenya in August.

Leaders of al-Shabaab, which rules most of southern Somalia under a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, praised their countryman's actions. "It was a brave step taken by a brave Somali man; he attacked a devil who insulted our honored Prophet Mohamed," al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told the Daily Telegraph in Mogadishu.

"We ask all Muslims to follow the good idea of that man; this is the start of Muslims' uprising against the aggressors. Surely an honored Muslim brother or sister will kill that devil in the next attack. Every Muslim knows that incident was mandatory to all Muslims."

However, he seemed to distance al-Shabaab from actually organising or funding the Denmark attack.

"It's all very, very murky as to what the guy was doing in Nairobi at the time Clinton was here, especially if he's supposedly on at least one Western intelligence agency's radar," said a European intelligence analyst specialising on Somalia. "Clearly if there was such a serious threat, bombing planned on big public spaces and so on, then it's a relief he was stopped before he could act, but surely he'd then merit more close observation once he was back in Denmark."

The Danish newspaper Politiken quoted Kenyan intelligence sources as saying that the man was detained for seven weeks on a formal charge of not having a passport.

"He was suspected of having connections to terrorists," the source told Politiken, adding that information about the man had been passed to Kenyan intelligence from other intelligence services.

According to the report, the man was arrested five days before the arrival in Kenya in August 2009 of the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at which time there were fears of a possible terrorist attack against a bus station and two hotels - one of which was the hotel to be used by Mrs. Clinton. The intelligence source told Politiken, however, that suspicions regarding the 28-year-old had not been in connection with the Clinton visit, but in more general terms that he could have connections to terrorist organisations.

"He could be a sympathiser who was perhaps involved in organizations in Kenya or elsewhere," the source told Politiken adding: "We don't know how he got into the country, but the suspicion was that he came via Somalia".

But he continued: "We didn't have a case against him, otherwise we would have charged him. Instead we chose to deport him".

Denmark's ambassador to Kenya said, however, that there had been a mistake, and that the man had not been suspected of terrorism and had been released as soon as it became clear that he had a residence permit in Denmark. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service said on Saturday that the man, who may not be named for legal reasons, had links to the Somali radical organization al-Shabaab as well as links to what were described as al-Qaeda leaders in East Africa'.
Posted by: Steve White 2010-01-04
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=287124