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Kenya 'expels race-hate cleric' | |
(2 days later) | |
Kenyan police say they have deported a Jamaican-born Muslim cleric notorious for preaching racial hatred but have declined to say where he has gone. | |
Abdullah al-Faisal had been sent to a "friendly neighbouring country" despite trouble finding a country to take him, a police spokesman told the BBC. | |
But a Muslim group later insisted Faisal was still in Nairobi. | |
Kenyan officials have said Faisal was being deported because of his "terrorist history". | |
He has served four years in a UK prison after being convicted of soliciting the murder of Jews and Hindus. | |
But the authorities have since given mixed signals over Faisal's whereabouts. | |
Some reports say Kenya has failed to deport him because no other country is willing to have him. | |
Other reports quote officials as saying he was sent by road to Tanzania on Monday night. | |
Terrorist 'watch-list' | |
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told the BBC there had been difficulties with deporting him because no-one wanted to grant him a visa even for transit. | |
Mr Kiraithe confirmed only that Faisal had left Kenya and that his final destination was Jamaica. | |
We are not deporting him because he is a Muslim Otieno KajwangImmigration minister | |
Shortly afterwards, Al-Amin Kimathi, of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, insisted that the authorities had not managed to expel him. | |
Faisal was arrested after attending evening prayers at a mosque in Mombasa last Thursday. | |
Muslim campaigners in Kenya have claimed Muslim clerics were being targeted. | |
"It is wrong for this government to allow other scholars to come in the country and accept them and deport other scholars without any reason so far," one Muslim protester said. | |
But Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang said Faisal was on an international watch-list of terrorists. | |
The minister, quoted in Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper, admitted they had no charges against him, but said: "We are not deporting him because he is a Muslim. | |
"We are deporting him because of his terrorist history and the fact that he is on the international watch-list." | |
African connection | |
Faisal was born Trevor William Forrest in St James, Jamaica, and left the island for the UK 26 years ago. | |
His parents were Salvation Army officers and he was raised as a Christian. | |
At the age of 16 he went to Saudi Arabia - where he is believed to have spent eight years - and became a Muslim. | |
He took a degree in Islamic Studies in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, before coming back to the UK. | He took a degree in Islamic Studies in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, before coming back to the UK. |
Faisal spent years travelling the UK preaching racial hatred urging his audience to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. | |
A year after being deported from the UK in 2007, he was preaching in South Africa. | |
Mr Kajwang said that Faisal had recently "arrived in Nigeria, passed through Angola, Mozambique, Swaziland and Malawi," before crossing from Tanzania into Kenya on 24 December. | |
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