Top Somali Islamist surrenders in Kenya
Source: Reuters
(Edits, adds U.S. State Department, paragraphs 3-5, 13) By C. Bryson Hull NAIROBI, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was under guard in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday after being taken into custody on the Somali border, officials said. Ahmed is the highest-ranking member of the former Somali Islamist rulers to turn himself in after a late December blitz by Ethiopian and Somali interim government troops routed them from southern Somalia. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Kenyan authorities had Ahmed in custody: "I think they are dealing with him as a refugee at this point." The Kenyan and Somali governments had no immediate comment. Ahmed is considered a moderate in the Islamist movement and before the war was among those the United States said should be involved in reconciliation talks in Somalia. He met U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger in September. A Western diplomat told Reuters Ahmed surrendered at the border on Sunday, and was being kept under guard at an upmarket hotel in Nairobi, where former Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre stayed when he fled his country in 1991. Two other Western diplomats confirmed the information as did a top Somali intelligence official. "They captured him in the Liboi area," the Somali intelligence official said. Liboi is a border post near Somalia's southern tip, where Ethiopian and Somali troops have been hunting Islamists. The United States conducted an air strike against what it called al Qaeda operatives among the Islamist ranks two weeks ago in its first publicly confirmed military action there since ending a disastrous peacekeeping mission in 1994. The United States embassy in Kenya, responsible for Somalia, denied reports U.S. officials were involved in the surrender. "The U.S. is not holding or protecting or interrogating Sheikh Sharif. We were not involved in his capture or surrender," an embassy official said on condition of anonymity. MODERATE WITH AN AK-47 Diplomats spoken to by Reuters said Kenya and possibly the United States most likely had a role in brokering Ahmed's surrender, with help from Somali and Kenyan politicians of Somali ethnic origin sympathetic to Islamist moderates. Since the war, the United States has said that all Somalis who renounce violence and extremism should be included in reconciliation. McCormack said he was not aware of plans for the U.S. ambassador, Ranneberger, to meet with Ahmed soon. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Ahmed's reputation suffered in Washington's eyes in the build-up to the war, but that he could have a role in reconciliation if he persuaded his followers to stop fighting. Ahmed, a former geography teacher who was one of the most visible faces of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC), wore combat fatigues and clutched an AK-47 while declaring jihad against Ethiopia at a news conference in October. But the SICC's belligerence vanished as they were run out of strongholds by Ethiopian air power and armour supporting Somali government troops in a two-week war. The Islamists have vowed to conduct a guerrilla war, and many suspect their hardcore militants have been behind a spate of attacks in Mogadishu, the latest of which occurred on Monday. Ethiopian troops and Somali police shot at protesters who hurled stones and fired back with assault rifles. Three people were killed and five wounded in the clash, a witness and a local journalist who asked not to be named said. The witness said Ethiopian troops returned to a livestock market in the coastal city where an attack on an Ethiopian convoy set off a clash that killed four on Saturday. Ethiopia wants to pull out of Somalia, and on Monday a Somali government source said Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin met President Abdullahi Yusuf at the capital's Villa Somalia compound, which was pounded by mortars on Friday. Ethiopia and Yusuf's government want an African Union-backed peacekeeping force of nearly 8,000 troops to help the government keep control of Somalia after Ethiopia goes. Malawi said on Monday the southern African country would deploy troops. But many doubt the AU's capacity to muster the full contingent, let alone tame a nation that defied the combined efforts of U.S. and U.N. peacekeepers in the early 1990s. (Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu, Ingrid Melander in Brussels, Sue Pleming in Washington and Mabvuto Banda in Lilongwe)
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