3.12.15

Kenya Jails UK Terror Suspect For Forgery

Grant pleaded guilty in December 2011 to charges of being in the country illegally and lying about his nationality, for which he was sentenced to two jail terms of two years each. He remains on trial for terrorism offences following his arrest in 2011 - he has denied all other charges, including claims he planned a bombing campaign against hotels popular with foreign tourists.
He is accused of ties to East Africa's al Qaeda branch, al Shabaab.
He is thought to have become radicalised as a teenager in the same British prison where "shoe bomber" Richard Reid converted.
Reid, who claimed he was an al Qaeda recruit, is serving a life sentence in the US for trying to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.
Prosecutors also accuse Grant, a Muslim convert, of working with fellow Briton Samantha Lewthwaite, nicknamed the "White Widow" by British media.
Lewthwaite, a 31-year-old Muslim convert, is the widow of 7/7 bomber Germaine Lindsay, and is rumoured to be living in Kenya.
She vanished from Mombasa in 2011 and has not been seen since.
Kenya has been increasingly targeted by al Shabaab which has come under pressure in Somalia where it is trying to overthrow the internationally-backed government.
The Islamist group was once popular with foreign fighters but it has not been so successful in recruitment in recent years because of the rise of IS in Syria and Iraq.

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