Four charged with Kenyan hotel bombing

Four people are to be charged with the suicide bombing of a hotel popular with Israelis on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

Eleven Kenyans and three Israeli tourists were killed in the blast.

As the attack took place, two surface-to-air missiles narrowly missed a jet packed with Israelis taking off about 50 miles away in Mombasa.

Three of the four suspects are tied to a man suspected of being Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, an al-Qaida operative who is also a key suspect in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi.

That bombing killed 219 people, including 12 Americans. Twelve people were also killed in a simultaneous bombing at the US embassy in Tanzania.

The suspects were charged in March with harbouring an illegal alien who was thought to be Mohammed.

But new evidence has led officials to charge them with murder, said Philip Murgor, director of public prosecutions.

Murgor named three of the suspects as Aboud Rogo Mohammed, Kubwa Mohamed and Mohamed Kubwa, Kubwa Mohamed’s father.

He refused to identify the fourth suspect and would not say whether it was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed.

The men could appear in court tomorrow, he added.

The new charges come amid renewed warnings of a terrorist attack in Kenya.

The US embassy closed on Friday and will remain shut until at least tomorrow, and air traffic between Kenya and neighbouring Somalia was banned after US officials raised the terrorism threat level in the area to “high”.

Somalia, a Muslim nation that has not had an effective government since 1991, is believed to be a transit point and staging ground for al-Qaida operatives working in East Africa.

US embassy spokesman Tom Hart said the move was due to “new and concrete information concerning the continuing threat of terrorist activity in Kenya and East Africa”.

US Ambassador Johnnie Carson has criticised Kenya’s anti-terrorism efforts, saying that while other countries that had been attacked by terrorists have managed to arrest suspects “in Kenya, there has not been a single arrest or conviction.”

Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi said today that Carson’s comments prompted Kenyan authorities to announce that the four will be charged rather than quietly bring them to court.