Kenyan police officers patrol along a street in the capital of Nairobi, July 23, 2015. Photo by Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images
An ISIS-linked terror group was planning to carry out “large-scale attacks” in Kenya comparable to the 2013 Westgate Mall siege that left dozens of people dead, local police said Wednesday.
Kenya’s National Police Service said it had foiled a plot due to unfold last Friday that involved medical experts with plans to “unleash a biological attack in Kenya using anthrax.”
A medical intern named Mohammed Abdi Ali was arrested under the country’s terror laws in connection with the alleged plan, police added in a statement.
Ali, who was interning at a hospital in the south of the country, is accused of radicalizing and recruiting university students and other young people into “terrorism networks,” the statement said.
Police added that Ali’s wife, Nuseiba Mohammed Haji — a student at Uganda’s Kampala International University — and her alleged “accomplice” Fatuma Mohammed Hanshi also were arrested in Uganda. The statement did not provide further details on their alleged involvement in any plot.
The arrests represented a “major breakthrough in the fight against terrorism in Kenya and the region,” according to the police statement.
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