Man sues government over alleged erroneous inclusion in terrorist blacklist

A man has moved to court, seeking to compel the government to remove him from the terrorist blacklist, claiming that he has been going through untold pain for the last six years.

In his case, Abdalla Abdlkadir Mohamed, who hails from Lamu County, has sued the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the Inspector General of Police, the Director of Immigration and the Attorney General, saying that since 2019, whenever he arrives at the airport or the border, he is stopped and referred to the Anti-terrorism Police Unit (ATPU).

He told the High Court Judge that he is then detained and questioned for being in the country’s terror suspects black book.

“On inquiry, the petitioner is informed that he is stopped, detained, and questioned because his name allegedly appears on “a list”. However, he has never been given details of the alleged “list”, the reason why he appears on such a “list”, or any alleged offence that led to him being placed on the “list.” He is also not informed of any orders issued against him that warrant his continued stopping, detention, and questioning,” his lawyer Taib Ali Taib said.

Abdalla stated that he wrote to the police on November 20 and 27 last year, inquiring why he had been flagged. At the same time, he added that he demanded that he be removed from the list, arguing that he was intentionally, erroneously and unfairly included in the database.

He further said that he did not receive any response.

Taib argued that it was strange that the security agencies were unwilling to give information on why his client was always a person of interest.

He said that repeated stoppage, detention and questioning without divulging any incriminating information was unfair and against Abdalla’s right to a lawyer and to be heard.

“By repeatedly stopping and detaining the petitioner for questioning by the first respondent over a period exceeding six years, the respondents have, ipso facto, designated him a terror suspect, for an indefinite period, and or effectively treated him as a de facto ‘specified entity,” claimed Taib.

According to the senior lawyer, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) describes a specified entity as a person who is believed to have committed, attempted to commit or participated, or is preparing to commit a terrorist act. At the same time, he said that Section 3 b of the same law includes persons who act on behalf of or in association with the specified person.

 He stated that the law requires the Cabinet Secretary to gazette a specified entity.

The lawyer was however, of the view that his client does not appear in any notice.

“Specified entities must be gazetted as such by the Cabinet Secretary. The Petitioner was treated as a specified entity and or a suspected specified entity even though he has never been gazetted as such. This treatment denied him a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate why he should not be treated as such, a right granted to specified entities under Section 3 (2) of the POTA,” argued Taib.

Abdalla wants the court to find that he has been unlawfully treated as a terrorist. Further, he is seeking an order to compel the police to remove from the watch list. The man is also asking the court to bar the police from either stopping, arresting or detaining him over the same claims.

He is also seeking Sh 5 million as compensation for the alleged violation of his rights.

In his supporting affidavit, Abdalla said that he cannot travel anymore owing to the arrests.

“The threat of repetition of this treatment is real, immediate, and continuing. Whenever I travel, whether for personal, business, or family reasons, I face the same ordeal. I cannot plan my travel with any certainty that I will not be detained and humiliated. The pattern of conduct by the respondents gives me every reason to believe that unless this Court intervenes, I will be subjected to the same treatment on my next occasion of travel,” he said.

He added that the detention happens in public glare, and sometimes, before people who know him.

Abdalla expressed fears that he may be arrested or charged, saying he has no clue why.

“I am genuinely and deeply anxious about what consequence the continued listing may have for me, beyond inconvenience and detention at ports each episode of detention and handover to ATPU officers occurs in full public view — in the presence of other travellers, airport and border staff, and sometimes my family and associates. The cumulative reputational harm from being publicly treated as a terror suspect over six years is considerable, and no amount of damages awarded at the end of these proceedings can restore my reputation for the period in the interim during which I continue to suffer this treatment,” he claimed.

In the meantime, for many years, the terror caused by Al-Shabaab insurgents has been masked as religious rhetoric, while in reality, it is an illusion of the vanguard.

 The story of how the terror group treats fighters drawn from outside Somalia paints a picture of a sacrificial caste, with Kenyans and other foreigners who cross over bearing the brunt of a group that is easily looking for a scapegoat for each attack failure.

Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir (Ikrima), is a poster boy of this dynamic, fueled by mistrust against outsiders. Ikrima, a high-ranking operative, survived an April 30, 2026, airstrike in Lower Shabelle only to be detained by al-Shabaab’s internal security wing, the Amniyat.

Born in Kenya in 1979 to Somali parents, he is neither fully foreign nor fully indigenous. The UN Security Council lists him as commander of al-Shabaab’s Kenyan fighters and ties him to the 2010 Kampala bombings, the 2013 Westgate attack, the 2012 UN base bombing in Mogadishu and a string of foiled plots against Kenyan politicians.

 In Nairobi, he is a most-wanted terrorist. Inside al-Shabaab, that biography is now a liability, not a credential. He has contacts in Kenya, has crossed borders, and has spoken to people outside the movement. In the calculus of the Amniyat, those facts are evidence of treachery.

Being a fugitive of the law, Ikrima who is linked to the Westgate Mall attack, has a Sh 648 million bounty on his head from America and an active warrant of arrest.

If the account holds, Ikrima is not the first foreign fighter to learn that the most dangerous enemy in Somalia is not the drone overhead but the suspicion of the men who recruited him.

For nearly two decades, Al-Shabaab has drawn young men from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Britain, Germany, Sweden and the United States into a war that consumes outsiders with ritual efficiency. They arrive believing they have joined a vanguard. They are, in fact, a sacrificial caste — useful for their passports, languages and propaganda value until the moment a tactical failure demands a scapegoat.

The pattern that may now claim Ikrima was set on September 12, 2013, with the execution of Omar Hammami in the scrubland of Hiran. An American citizen from Daphne, Alabama, Hammami had been the most famous foreign face of al-Shabaab’s English-language propaganda. By 2012, he had become a liability, criticizing Emir Ahmed Abdi Godane for corruption and brutality on Twitter.

The Amniyat hunted him for months. When they found him, there was no tribunal: he was shot in the bush alongside his British-Pakistani associate Osama al-Britani. No charge sheet was published. None was needed. Hammami was a foreigner.

Hammami’s death established the rule. Foreigners were tolerated when useful, never trusted.

 Ikrima appears not to have learned about the Al-Shabaab alter. He walked into it, just as a sheep is led to the slaughter, knife already sharpened for the neck.