Kenyan officials claim they foiled an anthrax terror attack

Kenyan police on Tuesday said they disrupted a plot by an ISIS-linked terror cell to launch a biological attack using anthrax. But critics are skeptical of the claim, suggesting it’s an effort to justify violent measures used against captive extremists.

Anti-terrorism officers arrested Mohammed Abdi Ali, a medical intern at the Wote District Hospital in Makueni County. Ali’s wife, Nuseiba Mohammed Haji, a medical student in Uganda, also was arrested, along with a friend, Fatuma Mohammed Hanshi. Kenya’s police chief, Joseph Boinnet, said officers are still looking for two accomplices, Ahmed Hish and Farah Dagane, who are medical interns in Kenya’s western town of Kitale.

“The suspects were planning large scale attacks akin to the Westgate Mall attack,” Boinnet said, referring to the 2013 attack by extremist group al-Shabaab that left 67 people dead. “His arrest and those of his accomplices is a major breakthrough in the fight against terrorism in Kenya and the region.”

But the police report has raised some concerns about the government’s transparency in handling terror cases. Kenyan human rights activist Al-Amin Kimathi said the police statement on bioterrorism is an excuse to cover up the suspects’ disappearance, which follows past trends of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

Peter Aling’o, a terrorism expert with the Institute for Security Studies based in Nairobi, Kenya, said he has not received an independent confirmation of the anthrax threat but admitted the government often uses extreme measures in dealing with captive terror suspects.

“Some of this information sometimes, they put it out in the public to raise public support for some of their actions and probably as a way of mitigating some of the excess they apply in the process of handling suspects,” Aling’o said.

Boinnet claims the terror cell also attempted to recruit university students to join Islamic State (ISIS) in Libya and Syria. At least 20 young Kenyans have left for Libya to join ISIS, according to police officials. The numbers have raised concerns ISIS is becoming a growing influence in Kenya and the region, but the terror group isn’t Kenya’s biggest threat, Aling’o said.

“Those are just isolated cases,” he said. “I think the big issue that we have is the al-Shabaab threat.”

Al-Shabaab is the Somalia-based terror group operating throughout East Africa. Kenya became a major target after it deployed troops to Somalia in 2011 to battle al-Shabaab’s terror in its home territory. In February, the extremist group killed at least 180 troops in a car-bomb attack on the African Union base in Somalia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.