Kibaki came under the wrath of Muslim marchers

By Ali Halani, IOL Staff

NAIROBI, July 23 (IslamOnline.net) – A leading Kenyan Islamic body called on the government to close anti-terrorism offices that had been opened in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in predominantly Muslim areas.

"These offices have become a source of nuisance for Kenyans in general and Muslims in particular," the Council of Ulema said in a statement on Tuesday, July 22 at the end of a meeting in the northern city of Garissa.

The meeting was attended by a number of the council members and Parliament members of this East African country.

The statement called opening anti-terrorism offices in Mombassa to the east and Garissa to the north – inhabited by majority of Muslims - is "unjustifiable" given perceived sentiments of local inhabitants against the phenomenon.

The American intelligence bodies have turned eyes of Muslim-inhabited areas in Kenya since the U.S. Embassy was bombed in 1998, and since a car bomb killed 14 people in the lobby of an Israeli-owned tourist hotel and a missile fired at an Israeli jetliner was narrowly missed.

The U.S. had blamed the attacks on Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, which Washington alleged hundreds of its members and other groups are believed to be finding a safe haven in Africa.

'National Crisis'

But the Council of ulema dubbed as repressive following measures taken under the U.S. and Israeli pressures.

Among these measures is enacting anti-terrorism law, which the statement said allows the authorities to "detain, take into custody and interrogate any body in a way that harms his dignity".

Council leader Professor Abdel-Qader Abu Zeid warned the law would be a "national crisis" if set in motion.

"The law gives security bodies larger powers to spread panic among criticizes, and not to fight terrorism," Abu Zeid said with a skeptical tone in an address before a popular gathering of Muslims.

He was also critical of anti-terrorism offices in Kenya "as mainly meant to serve the Americans' interests, not Kenyan government's nor its people's".

Those attending the gathering took to streets for a march in which they chanted slogans against President Mwai Kibaki for not responding to an appeal of thousands of Muslims to intervene for the release of a religious scholar detained by CIA officers in Malawi.

Muslims make up 30 percent of Kenya's population, and are living in majority in northern and eastern parts.

After the 1998 bombing, many of their houses were raided by the Kenyan police together with the FBI, "without the minimum of human rights basis, without search warrants or anything," he added.

The measures have raised negative sentiments against the presence of foreign troops in the country, amid reports of abuses against local inhabitants.

The Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, called for a commission of inquiry into the rape claims and criminal prosecutions against individual soldiers serving in Kenya amid growing complains from Kenyan women that they were raped by British soldiers.

But the United States was more careful to protect its soldiers aboard.

On June 12, the U.S. signed an agreement with Uganda giving its citizens there immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), hours after the U.N. Security Council renewed a one-year exemption for U.S. peacekeeping troops from ICC prosecution, amid world-wide criticism of the move.