By Andrew Ross
NAIROBI, Kenya (AA) – Authorities in Kenya on Tuesday said that they had foiled a major bio-terror attack in the East African country after arresting three people who were plotting the attacks planned for April 29, with four of the plotters still at large.
“Following police investigations into a terror plot by an East African-based terror network with links to ISIL, police arrested Mohammed Abdi Ali, a medical intern,” said Joseph Boinett, Kenya’s inspector general of police, in a statement, using an alternative acronym for the terrorist Daesh group.
Ali and other medical experts are said to have been planning to unleash a biological attack using anthrax.
Since the arrest of Ali and two others, four other accomplices, all medical interns, have gone into hiding, and authorities in Kenya have placed a 2 million Kenya shillings bounty on their heads.
Ali, an intern from Woe hospital in Kenya’s Makueni county, is said to have graduated from Kampala University before coming to Kenya, where he formed a terrorist recruiting ring.
The Kenyan authorities added that their investigations found that the terror ring with connections in Syria and Somalia had been involved in recruiting university students and other Kenyan young people.
“The terror network was planning a large-scale attack akin to the [2013] Westgate Mall attack with the intention of killing innocent Kenyans,” Boinett said.
