A university graduate who left home to command Al-Shabaab units in Somalia has moved closer to the Kenyan border, escaping imminent execution by fellow commanders after a fallout.
Ahmed Iman, alias Kimanthi, who acquired an Engineering degree from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Jkuat) in Juja, Kiambu County, is on the run, together with a group of terrorists, the Sunday Nation has established.
He had a disagreement with Al-Shabaab supremos Ahmed Diriye and Mahad Karate, who are Somalis. The two are said to have sent emissaries – Somali elders – in a bid to talk to Iman and convince him to mend fences with his colleagues, thereby consolidating Al-Shabaab factions against African Union (AU) forces fighting them.
However, one of the Jayshi Ayman terrorists who surrendered to Kenyan authorities last month confessed that the apparent extension of an olive branch is part of a bigger plan to have Iman executed.
Jayshi Ayman is a faction of Shabaab that operates in Boni, a forest area that extends from Lamu County in Kenya to southern Somalia.
This faction is loyal to Iman. The Shabaab defector, according to sources privy to security interrogations, said the graduate is seeking amnesty from the Kenyan Government in exchange for information that would help in the war against the terrorist organisation.
The government has in the past offered to pardon and rehabilitate radicalised Kenyans who crossed the border to fight in lawless Somalia. Somalia has not had a functional government since 1990.
