Abdullah al Faisal’s trip home to Jamaica on a chartered private jet that was paid for by a South African company cost $500,000, one source told a Jamaican newspaper.
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johnpi
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thabet
Poor old Abdullah al-Faisal, no one wants him:
The government was ordered to produce Faisal, but state counsel Edwin Okello said: “The subject is no longer within the court’s jurisdiction.”
Mr Okello said the cleric, convicted in the UK for soliciting murder of Jews and Hindus, was heading for Jamaica.
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johnpi
Kenyan police detained 300 Somali immigrants and a leading Muslim activist as tension mounted between the authorities and the nation’s Muslim minority following a deadly protest last week.
As the government scrambled to find countries willing to take in hardline Jamaican preacher Abdullah al-Faisal, whose botched deportation sparked the unrest, police vowed to deal firmly with a new protest planned on Friday.
The elite paramilitary General Service Unit and the anti-terrorism police raided Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood late Sunday and detained 300 people said to be illegal Somali immigrants.
Related: Kenya says Muslim cleric to be deported in two days.
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johnpi
Kenyan police, people clash with al Faisal supporters.
Kenyan security forces shot in the air and fired tear gas at hundreds of people protesting in the capital on Friday against the detention of Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal.
The protesters, chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) and some holding the flag of Somali rebel group al Shabaab, were blocked by police with dogs as they tried to march through the heart of Nairobi after prayers at the downtown mosque.
Some Kenyans, angry the attempted protest had taken place at all, joined forces with the security forces and began hurling stones at the marchers, squeezing them back toward the mosque.
“This is not an acceptable behavior. The man who is supposed to be deported is not a Kenyan and his presence is not in the interest of Kenya these days,” said bystander Richard Odibo.
A helicopter clattered overhead and police also used water cannon to contain the clashes. Many protesters, some carrying pictures of Faisal on placards, were eventually corralled in the mosque but small groups continued hurling stones nearby.
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johnpi
Jamaican Muslim leaders agree to reinforce a ban on radical preacher Abdullah al Faisal if he ever makes it back to Jamaica.
Further, the imams want to work with the Jamaican government to focus on Jamaican citizens who have been deported from other countries after converting to Islam in foreign prisons.
“There are going to be some changes there,” said Muhammad, who noted that there are a number of deportees coming back from prisons in America and England who have Islamic materials they have received while in the prisons in these countries.
“We will try to see how best we can get these persons back in the community from a positive point of view and ensure that if they still maintain their Islamic identity, it is in fact in a positive way instead of a negative way,” said Muhammad.
Also, according to the Jamaican newspaper I’ve linked here, al Faisal was successfully deported from Kenya to Gambia. It’s like a game of “Where’s Waldo” trying to figure out where assorted governments have stashed him.
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johnpi
The tough life of a radical preacher: Attempt to deport Abdullah al Faisal to Gambia fails.
Nigeria refused to give him a transit visa, and he has been returned to Kenya where he is now languishing in a Nairobi jail.
The problem for Kenya and al Faisal is how to get him back to his home country of Jamaica, which has said it will take him, when no country in the world will even let him pass through its airspace.
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johnpi
Abdullah al Faisal’s forced hijrah to Somalia.
So far, three countries have refused al Faisal a transit visa: South Africa, the UK and Tanzania. Human rights activists say that because of the fact that “no country with a functional government is willing to allow him to fly over their airspace,” Kenyan authority’s only option may be to “dump” him to a “lawless country” like Somalia, which the activists are calling ‘rendition.’
After living his entire life in the West, al Faisal will finally get a chance to live in the particular version of paradise he has been preaching about.
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johnpi
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johnpi
The New York Times is reporting that Abdullah al Faisal may have been a source of radicalization or inspiration to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day suicide attacker.
Mr. Faisal’s name surfaced much more recently in investigations into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of the attempted attack on a Northwest Airlines flight.
In an online posting in May 2005, under the name “farouk1986,” Mr. Abdulmutallab referred to Mr. Faisal as a cleric he had listened to, according to American military and law enforcement authorities.
In his posting, Mr. Abdulmutallab wrote: “I thought once they are arrested, no one hears about them for life and the keys to their prison wards are thrown away. That’s what I heard Sheik Faisal of U.K. say (he has also been arrested I heard).”
Al Faisal was also Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui’s imam in the UK at the Brixton mosque. More background on al Faisal here.
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johnpi
Jamaican government vows to monitor Abdullah el-Faisal.
A Jamaican-born Muslim cleric once jailed in Britain for urging the killing of Americans, Hindus and Jews will be a security concern for his Caribbean homeland when he is deported from Kenya, an official said Monday.
After being deported to Jamaica from the UK in 2007, Jamaican law enforcement watched al-Faisal.
Gilbert Scott, former permanent secretary of Jamaica’s Security Ministry, said agents monitored el-Faisal during his time on the Caribbean island.
“Our security apparatus remained quite alert to his activities to make sure he was not creating any breaches,” said Scott, who left the ministry in November 2008. He said he didn’t recall anything that caused “security agents to be overly concerned with him.”
Scott said el-Faisal had been “somewhat active” in Jamaica’s small Muslim community — roughly 5,000 adherents among the tropical island’s population of 2.8 million.
johnpi is discussing. 
Abdullah al Faisal shuffled off to Gambia instead.