Woman held in Uganda for sneaking knife to terror suspect

KAMPALA Dec 6 (Reuters) - Police in Uganda said on Monday they had arrested a woman for trying to smuggle a knife hidden inside a pineapple to a suspect held on suspicion of masterminding bomb blasts in Kampala in July.
Vicente Ssekate, a deputy police spokesperson, said Faridah Hamubu visited Omar Awadh Omar at Luzira Prison in Kampala on Dec. 2 carrying several items for the prisoner including a pineapple.
"She had taken some items to Omar and as is the normal procedure those items had to be checked by warders... (who) discovered that she had concealed a knife in the middle of a pineapple. She was immediately arrested."
Omar, an alleged top leader of Al-Qaeda's east Africa cell, was arrested in Uganda in September as one of the masterminds behind the Kampala bombings, which killed 79 people watching the World Cup final on television.
He has been charged with terrorism, murder and attempted murder.
Ssekate said police were yet to establish Hamubu's relationship to Omar and what the knife was intended for.
The twin suicide blasts at a restaurant and a sports club were the first attacks on foreign soil by militants of Somalia's al Shabaab group, which claims links to al Qaeda.
The bombings heightened the security threat in east Africa, a region viewed by the West as a fertile breeding ground for Islamist extremists. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by James Macharia and Maria Golovnina)