Ugandan Al-Shabaab suspect arrested

A Ugandan suspected to belong to Somalia’s al-Shabaab terror group has been arrested. Media Centre boss Fred Opolot said Ali Issa Sekumba was arrested by Kenya Police in Nairobi and handed over to their Ugandan counterparts. The suspect, he said, was undergoing interrogation at an undisclosed location.
“At the time of his arrest, Sekumba claimed he was fleeing from al-Shabaab in Somalia. That is part of what we want to verify,” Opolot said at a press conference at the Media Centre yesterday. He said Sekumba was originally from Butambala County, formerly part of Mpigi district, but now a separate district.The development comes as Rachid Abdi, a Somalia expert with the International Crisis Group, said there were Ugandans within the rank and file of the hard-line Islamist group, al-Shabaab. He said Uganda AMISOM commanders had recently received threats in Luganda in calls originating from Somalia. “It will be interesting when forensic investigators establish the identities. The attacks were not necessarily carried out by Somalis, but possibly by Ugandan jihadis fighting alongside them,” Abdi said. The arrest of Senkumba and Abdi’s revelations are bound to add a worrying dimension to investigations into Sunday’s bombings, especially after the Police said it suspected the attacks to have been orchestrated by an outside group, given the level of sophistication.