Sunday, September 2, 2012

State must get to the bottom of Rogo’s killing


State must get to the bottom of Rogo’s killing

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By KWENDO OPANGA
Posted  Saturday, September 1  2012 at  19:13
IN SUMMARY
  • Will Parliament pass the anti-terrorism Bill before it if the country’s Muslims who have opposed it every inch of the way believe the police took out Rogo?
  • Will not positions harden if Muslims are persuaded that the Bill targets them and that police have singled them out for links to terror because of their religion? The Bill may 
    be killed.
  • Crucially, had police gathered all the intelligence they needed about Rogo’s activities especially with regard to recruitment of youths into Al-Shabaab?
The government must painstakingly investigate the two-day mayhem in Mombasa sparked by the killing of Malindi-based terror-accused Aboud Rogo.
Why? Because, it appears to me, virtually everything about the killing and the violent protests is important.
First, let us look at the deceased. He was taken out. Who took him out? Whoever did it wanted it done there and then and not an hour later.
Therefore, it did not matter, or actually mattered, that he was killed in cold blood, literally in a hail of bullets, before his wife, daughter and father-in-law.
The gunmen could have killed all of them, but they would not have been troubled as long as Rogo was dead. But why use 15 bullets when one would have killed the man?
This may point to a deep-seated or pathological loathing of the man by the killers or their hirers. Second, did the police take him out? If they did, then they must be unwise.
Not just because they would be the first suspects and targets of the violence of his supporters, but because of what this would mean for the global war on terror and especially pending local anti-terrorism legislation.
Will Parliament pass the anti-terrorism Bill before it if the country’s Muslims who have opposed it every inch of the way believe the police took out Rogo?
Will not positions harden if Muslims are persuaded that the Bill targets them and that police have singled them out for links to terror because of their religion? The Bill may 
be killed.
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Crucially, had police gathered all the intelligence they needed about Rogo’s activities especially with regard to recruitment of youths into Al-Shabaab?
Did they know the youths in training in Somalia and those who had trained and returned to Kenya? Did they know to what use the returnees were putting their training?
Rogo was already on the radar of local police who accused him of recruiting youths for the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militia and the American Federal Bureau of Investigations which has linked him to the Somali Islamists.
Rogo himself had claimed police were trailing him and that there had been an attempt to abduct him in Nairobi. Third, violence did erupt. It seemed spontaneous at first, but it soon became apparent it was not.
The protesters targeted the police and churches. They were armed with petrol bombs and grenades. These facts point to deliberate organisation and procurement and, therefore, funding. Were merchants of violence a step ahead of the police again?
Bombing and burning churches had a determined agenda; to set Christians against Muslims. Fanning such religious antagonism and animosity would clearly destabilise the coast.
The region’s restive people have a catalogue of grievances against the government, which the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) loudly broadcasts.
Fourth, MRC has gone beyond articulation of grievances and advocates the coast’s secession. That this is the coast adds a hugely significant economic twist to the violence.
The coast is the jewel in the crown of Kenya’s beach-based tourism. The port of Mombasa is the gateway to eastern Africa and the Great Lakes region.
Its strategic and economic importance cannot be gainsaid. The business of Mombasa is business. The reason why Mombasa is important to Kenya and East Africa is business. Mombasa is the gateway to East Africa because of business.
To shut down Mombasa is to shut down Kenya because that will shut down tourism and business with the rest of the world. Is this the point the protesters were making?
Fifth, the timing of the violence cannot be taken for granted. This is the time of the Mombasa Agricultural Society of Kenya Show.
It is traditionally opened by the President and the Head of State was expected in Mombasa. Not to have gone would have been a huge victory for the protesters and that he went has equally been a statement to them.
Sixth, the violence in Mombasa may have been independent of the recent communal violence in Tana River and Mandera, but it adds to the insecurity in Kenya and stretches the 
security arm of government, especially the police, thin. That Mathew Iteere’s stay in office as Commissioner of Police is in question just adds to the crisis.
Last, which could well be first, are there groups that could have taken out Rogo with all of the above in mind or could Rogo’s allies or foes killed the man for something else 
and, by pure happenstance, visited this chaos on Kenyans? Thank God it is not only police who are investigating this murder most foul.
Kwendo Opanga is a media consultant opanga@diplomateastafrica.com

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