US-Kenya announce Sh1.2billion bounty for DusitD2 terror attack mastermind Abdi Aden
The Kenyan and the United States of America (USA) governments have announced a Sh1.2billion (10million US Dollars) bounty on the whereabouts of the mastermind of the 2019 DusitD2 Complex terrorist attack in Nairobi Mohamoud Abdi Aden.
Speaking yesterday at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters, American Ambassador to Kenya Her Excellency Margaret Cushing Whitman described Abdi as the “terror mastermind” of a bloody hotel attack in Kenya four years ago.
She spoke alongside DCI Director Amin Mohamed.
Abdi is believed to be a leader of the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab jihadist group that has carried out several deadly attacks in the country.
Earlier this week, three Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA) engineers were killed after the vehicle they were travelling in ran over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Bura East, Tana River County.
A convoy of KeNHA engineers in three vehicles undertaking routine assessment of the Lapsset road were attacked by suspected Al- Shabaab who had placed an IED on the old Lapsset road which exploded destroying the first vehicle.
The Al-Qaeda affiliated group claimed responsibility for the January 15, 2019 siege on the upmarket DusitD2 Hotel compound that lasted almost 20 hours along the reclusive Riverside Drive.
“Mohamoud Abdi Aden, an Al-Shabab leader, was part of the cell that the planned the DusitD2 hotel attack,” the US ambassador said.
She said the US was offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Abdi, described by the embassy as a Kenyan national, and others accused of involvement in the hotel siege.
On his part, the DCI boss Amin described Abdi as the “terror mastermind” behind the siege.
The US State Department designated Abdi a “specially designated global terrorist” in October last year.
In 2013, Al-Shabaab laid siege to the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi for four days, leaving 67 people dead.
In 2015, an attack on Garissa University in eastern Kenya killed 148 people, almost all of them students. Many were shot at point blank range after being identified as Christians.
It was the second bloodiest attack in Kenya’s history, surpassed only by Al-Qaeda’s bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998 that killed 213 people.
Al-Shabab, which has been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s fragile central government for 15 years, has been designated a terrorist group by the US since 2008.
In November, Washington said it was increasing its reward to up to $10 million apiece for key Al-Shabab leaders including “emir” Ahmed Diriye.
