Doubt over arrested 'Top 22 terrorist'

Kenyan police are trying to determine the identity of a man they arrested believing he was involved in the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Kenya that killed more than 200 people.

He was initially identified as Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, whose name appears on the list of 22 Most Wanted Terrorists issued in October by President George Bush.

The man was arrested in Mandera, 500 miles northeast of Nairobi on Kenya’s border with Somalia, said police spokesman Dola Indidis.

But Indidis later said that police had not yet determined the man’s identity, and ‘‘we may not know all his names or aliases, but I can confirm we have arrested a sheikh.’’

In Islam, a sheikh is a religious scholar and often an official of a mosque.

Billow Adam, chairman of Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque, said police had arrested the wrong man. He identified him as a man in his 60s whose nickname, Ahmed Sudan, may have confused authorities.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair identified Swedan as one of two al-Qaida operatives who bought a truck used in the August 1998 Nairobi embassy bombing in which 219 people were killed, including 12 Americans.

The arrest on Saturday stemmed from a tip ‘‘from a concerned Kenyan’’ given to the US Embassy, said spokesman Peter Claussen.