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Kongomano la Mageuzi: A Luta Continua!

7 min read.

We must provoke a new political awakening, imagine a new politics, a new humanity, and bring about a fourth liberation — the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution.

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Kongomano la Mageuzi: A Luta Continua!

The launch of Kongomano La Mageuzi-VUMA (KLM-VUMA) comes at a time when COVID-19 has brought home to the planet, the African continent and our country that we must reject all normality past and present and imagine new societies that are just, free, peaceful, non-militaristic, ecologically safe, egalitarian and equitable, non-racist, non-ethnic, gender-just, prosperous, and socialist. Of course, from lessons learnt over the last 100 years, socialism is being critiqued, historicised, and problematised in various creative ways. The focus seems to be on consolidating the strengths of socialism and mitigating its weaknesses. Public and organic intellectuals and movements are engaged in the quest for a paradigm or paradigms that will liberate the planet.

It is therefore useful to position KLM-VUMA — this movement of civil society organisations, social movements, and individuals committed to the transformation of the economic, social, cultural, spiritual, ideological and political status quo of our motherland — within the global, regional, and national contexts, so that the movement can clearly see the challenges that lie ahead, the difficulties that it will have to surmount.

The great African Marxist revolutionary Samir Amin has written extensively on the exploitation, oppression, and domination of the Global South by the imperialism of the West (neoliberalism), or what he calls the imperialism of the Triad (America, Europe, and Japan) with its satellite countries comprising Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In Europe, Germany seems to dominate the former states of the Soviet Empire, while Russia has not managed to remove itself from the clutches of the imperialism of the West. Nevertheless, neoliberalism as a paradigm for socio-economic life and politics has failed.

Social democratic societies seem to be consistently moving to the right, particularly in Europe and Canada (where there has been a muted social democracy). The Nordic countries and Holland —which experimented with a model of social democracy that prioritised public goods and radically mitigated capitalism —also seem to have moved to the right and are comfortably installed within the orbit of the imperialism of the West.

China has become the focus of attention for many liberation movements. Afro-Chinese relations are examined and debated but a consensus is yet to be reached on whether China is a neoliberal imperialist country. In my view it is. We hear the beating of the global drums of war as we witness cyber warfare and geopolitical positioning in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kenya, and indeed the Global South, has a great opportunity to regain its sovereignty amidst the growing tensions and hostilities between the West and China. We must take this opportunity to redress the historical injustices of colonialism. We should not be trooping to the US and the UK to sign skewed free trade agreements. It is this reimagining of Kenya and Africa — and its place in the world — that KLM-VUMA seeks to ignite.

On the African continent, the burning question is how to bring about the resurrection of radical people-to-people Pan-Africanism as envisioned, not by the leaderships of the African Union, but by the people of Africa themselves. Debates on this issue are reaching back to the political positions of Nyerere, Nkrumah, Cheikh Anta Diop, Amilcar Cabral, Gaddafi (particularly his call for African Unity to include a free African currency) and others in the African continent and Diaspora.

Closer to home the pandemic has exposed the wicked rule of the Kenyan elite and their foreign backers. Like their foreign patrons, our elite believe money is all it takes to organise and mobilise in politics; the Constitution decrees otherwise. The commons and public goods have been commodified. The mitigating vision of the 2010 Constitution has been subverted. Poverty has become a way of life for the majority of our compatriots. The middle class is shrinking and joining the ranks of the working class. In his time, J.M. Kariuki feared for a Kenya of ten millionaires and ten million beggars. Now we have (according to an Oxfam Report) a Kenya of 8,300 Kenyans billionaires and multi-millionaires whose assets equal those of the rest of us combined — all the 47 million of us.

The status quo in land, resources, the ownership of the commons and public goods is unacceptable and unsustainable. Kenya has a sovereign debt that makes it difficult for Kenyans to call our country free and independent. We have an elite that is daily engaged in grand corruption and all the ills of an illicit economy. President Uhuru Kenyatta has admitted in public that KSh2 billion is stolen daily in Kenya. As to why he has done nothing about it, your guess is as good as mine.

The Kenyan elite are without a doubt leaders unto darkness and death. They are geniuses in the politics of division and in the politics of inhumanity; the data proving this fact is incontrovertible. They have managed to keep Kenyans divided for the last 57 years and their ongoing intra-elite succession struggles seek to snuff out other political narratives and kill off any nascent alternative political leadership. It would not surprise me to see the opposing factions come together in the near future in the name of national unity; one only need analyse the alliances formed by our elites since independence.

The Kenyan elite have subverted the vision of the constitution and corrupted all its transformative ingredients. The opposition has joined the government, a faction of which now claims to be the opposition. We have a continuation of the dictatorships of the past.

The Kenyan middle class — particularly the lower and the middle middle-class — is being pushed back down into the ranks of the working class while the upper middle class, in its quest to join the ranks of the elite, continues to subsidise those elite. The entire Kenyan middle class actually subsidises the state. The monies they pay to the extended families to enable them to access public goods (education, housing, health, employment, water) even as they are heavily taxed, should motivate them to join the ranks of this movement. Will they?

Yes, we know Kenyans have resisted dictatorship since the 19th century. This resistance has taken place both underground and overtly. The Mau Mau War of Liberation fits within this trajectory of resistance and struggle for our land, our national resources, and our freedom and human dignity. History records that at no point did Kenyans ever stop struggling for justice, freedom, emancipation, and democracy. So why should we stop now? Kenyans have always consolidated the gains achieved and struggled for greater social reform.

There have been great leaps forward since independence, through the second liberation to the constitution making that culminated in the third liberation, the promulgation of the current constitution on 27 August 2010. The struggle for the full implementation of the constitution continues, with the Kenyan elite subverting its vision and clawing back the gains of 2010 in order to restore the status quo.

But there are challenges to be faced, and questions whose answers will give KLM-VUMA its manifesto, clarify its United Front ideological and political position, state its message clearly to the working class, the middle class and the popular nationalist and democratic forces, the baron-elite compradors, and the foreign interests of the West and East.

To begin with, we must study our history and learn about those who were here before us and about the pitfalls they faced so that we can go to the field well prepared. The essential question we must ask ourselves is: what has KLM-VUMA learnt from past movements and individuals including Me Kitilili, Waiyaki wa Hinga, Muthoni Nyanjiru, the Mau Mau Liberation Movement with its female and male leaders, the various religious and education movements such as Dini ya Msambwa and Dini ya Kaggia? What have we learnt of the struggles of Markhan Singh, Pio Gama Pinto, the Kenya People’s Union (KPU), the Kenya Socialist Alliance (KASA), Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the December Twelfth Movement, the Mwakenya Movement? What of the various movements of exiled Kenyans after 1982, the second liberation movement, Wangari Maathai, the National Convention Assembly-National Convention Executive Council (NCA-NCEC), and the constitution-making movements that gave us the progressive 2010 Constitution?

We must not forget to look outside Kenya, to Africa and beyond, to see which movements are working and those that aren’t. What has made certain movements successful and why others have failed. We must use this age of technology to learn about the past, understand our present and have a vision for the future — and a strategy and responses ready for when we do hit those walls.

Have we learnt the lessons from all these movements, their strengths and their weaknesses? Have we assimilated the principle of non-partisanship having learnt from the movements that received foreign funding which incapacitated them politically? Have we interrogated the importance of alliances with political parties that reflect our ideology and politics? Are we ready to contest for political power so that we can implement the 2010 Constitution and correct its weaknesses? Have we reflected on whether the movement will incubate alternative political leadership?

Which movements come under the umbrella of KLM-VUMA? Is DeCOALONIZE — which has shouted a loud NO! to the nuclear power and coal plants that our political leadership wants to obtain corruptly from countries that are discarding them) on board? The social justice movements should be on board, as indeed should the artists and movements in this country.

Have we analysed the strengths and weaknesses of the elites (economic, social, cultural, spiritual, ideological, and political) and the challenges posed? How shall we deal with the politics of division?

How shall we deal with the challenge of mobilising and organising? Are we ready to raise our funds from Wanjiku since we do not have finances?

How will we guarantee free, fair, peaceful, credible, and acceptable elections?

Will we build on the gains we shall make in 2022?

Will we become the people’s opposition even if we do not win in 2022?

Will our movement reflect the face of Kenya? Will this movement be led by the youths (women and men) of this country who reflect the vision for the change that we need?

What is the movement’s position on the resurrection of radical Pan-Africanism? Do we have positions on Palestine?

Are we anti-imperialist and anti-Kenyan elites?

What is our position on the rights of LGBTIQ+?

What do we consider to be the major weaknesses of the 2010 Constitution?

Do we believe that our movement has all the expertise it needs to serve as a government in waiting?

Are we going to dust off all the reports of the various historical injustices in this country and implement them?

If KLM-VUMA comes to power, will we pursue revenge politics against the elite? And if so, have we sufficiently analysed the political consequences?

What social reforms will we undertake?

What political messages will we have for Kenyan capitalists oppressed by the elite?

What political messages will we have for the foreign interests (a euphemism for the imperialism of the West and East)?

Have we thought through which anti-baronial political parties we will work with and why?

Have we clarified the ideological and political ingredients of a United Front that is anti-imperialist and anti-baronial?

Have we identified the public and organic intellectuals we shall work with? No movement can survive without organic intellectuals.

These are some of the burning questions that Kenyans must address in order to provoke a new political awakening, imagine a new politics, a new humanity, and bring about a fourth liberation — the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution.

A luta continua, vitória é certa.

The struggle continues, victory is certain.

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Dr Willy Mutunga is a public intellectual and former Chief Justice of Kenya.

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USA: For Right-Wing Extremists the Attack on Capitol Hill Was a Victory

The successful attack on Capitol Hill will fuel years of recruitment and mythologising for post-Trump extremists.

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USA: For Right-Wing Extremists the Attack on Capitol Hill Was a Victory

As attacks grow more shocking and dramatic, the size of their audience increases accordingly. While most observers are terrified and outraged by such violence, a small minority become inspired enough to plan attacks of their own. This is how extremist movements grow. This is how they seek to bend the world to their will.

Social media has dramatically increased the effectiveness of spectacular acts of terror. In 2014, ISIS militants used the viral executions of two American hostages to declare war on the United States. They were rewarded with an exponential increase in Western media coverage and tens of thousands of recruits from more than 100 countries. In 2019, a New Zealand-based white supremacist livestreamed his murder of 51 Muslim congregants in the city of Christchurch. His actions prompted numerous copycat attacks and a global resurgence of white ethno-nationalism.

Yet the media impact and symbolic power of these attacks are dwarfed by the events of January 6, 2021, during which far-right extremists stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol at the encouragement of President Trump. Several carried firearms. Others reportedly planted improvised explosive devices. In less than two hours, they overwhelmed federal police and forced the Congress to flee. They breached the seat of American government that had stood inviolate for 211 years. It was a violent, extraordinary, unthinkable victory; one whose images and videos captivated the world.

This was the most spectacular domestic extremist attack in American history. The individuals who perpetrated this attack will be mythologized as heroes among future extremists. A generation of far-right recruits too young to have participated will spend their lives dreaming of again seizing the U.S. Capitol. In the words of writer Osita Nwanevu, this will become the “Woodstock” of the far-right — the victory and spectacle by which all future actions are measured.

Many of the individuals who directly participated in this action have undergone years of radicalization in extremist online communities and developed a unique culture steeped in ironic violence. They have come to venerate street fighting as the ultimate form of political expression and can name various skirmishes — the 2017 U.S. presidential inauguration, protests in Berkeley and Portland, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, the deadly counter-protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin — as a veteran might count battles. Their ranks have swelled in recent months thanks to the popularity of the QAnon delusion and baseless claims of voter fraud that have been aggressively amplified by Trump and his allies.

In some ways, the attack on the U.S. Capitol was the culmination of this violent and conspiratorial movement of pro-Trump communities. Yet because the attack was so catastrophically effective, it also represents the birth of the post-Trump extremist movement. As casual Trump supporters peel away from the network in the weeks to come, they will be replaced by a new cadre who are less politically engaged but far more likely to undertake acts of violence. So it has been with the evolution of extremist movements around the world; so it will now be in the United States.

(Source: @etbrooking/via thedonald.win)

(Source: @etbrooking/via thedonald.win)

Two factors will make this post-Trump extremist movement uniquely dangerous. The first is the transition to anti-state violence. Participants in the January 6 attack routinely assaulted U.S. Capitol Police (often, ironically, while carrying pro-police paraphernalia). Following the killing of one female participant by law enforcement, online supporters of the attack darkly speculated that the police had been infiltrated by antifa “terrorists.” The woman was quickly recast as a martyr, one whose death might be the spark of a bloody revolution.

Previous far-right, anti-state movements have struggled to gain traction under the Trump presidency. The most successful of these — the so-called “Boogaloo” movement — hid its overt anti-state violence under layers of subtext and irony. When Boogaloo supporters did engage in acts of anti-state terrorism, as with the murder of two California security officers in June 2020, they sapped the movement of popular support. Under a Biden administration, however, this cognitive dissonance will no longer be an issue. If state authorities are seen to be corrupt and working at the behest of a Democratic administration, they will be targets.

The second factor is the mainstream popularity of the far-right extremist movement in the United States. For years, Trump has conditioned Republican voters to support violence as a means of settling political disputes. From the podium, Trump has regularly encouraged assaults on journalists and dehumanized racial and ethnic minorities. This rhetoric has carried terrible consequences. According to a January 6 YouGov poll, 45 percent of Republican voters supported the storming of the U.S. Capitol, seeing it as just another kind of political expression.

This means that a post-Trump extremist movement — even one that routinely engages in violence — may benefit from a level of political support not seen since that of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction-era American South. And so long as the movement remains politically popular, there will be politicians who seek to court it. As much could already be seen when the U.S. Congress reconvened early in the morning of January 7. In their remarks, several Republican legislators sought to trivialize or excuse the attack that had forced them from their chamber. Congressman Matt Gaetz (FL-1) went so far as to blame antifa activists, whom he alleged — without evidence — had initiated the attack to give Trump supporters a bad name.

The violent extremist movement inspired by the events of January 6 will rank as one of the great challenges of the Biden presidency. Diminishing the strength of this movement will require disentangling isolated, angry Trump supporters from the much smaller core of extremists who seek to do Americans harm. It will require sapping the January 6 attack of its myth-making potential and to ensure that it is viewed, rightly, as a national embarrassment. Most of all, it will require confronting the pundits and conspiracy theorists who will seek to boost the far-right extremist movement in a grasping bid to retain their relevancy.

This work must begin immediately. The stakes were high before. They are higher now.

This article was first published by Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. The DFRLab team in Cape Town works in partnership with Code for Africa.

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Dismantling and Transcending Colonialism’s Legacy

Nkrumah, Nyerere and Senghor were acutely aware of the need to displace the epistemic conditions of colonization in order to transcend it.

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Dismantling and Transcending Colonialism’s Legacy
Photo: Unsplash/berenice melis

In “decolonial” discourse, the African leadership landscape is flattened to the point of becoming a caricature. In an earlier variation of this caricature, Kwame Nkrumah’s injunction of “seek ye first the political kingdom” was presented by political scientist Ali Mazrui as a deficient obsession with political power to the neglect of the economic. In the current variation, the neglect of epistemic “decoloniality” is characterised as the deficient underbelly of the “nationalist” movement.

Kwame Nkrumah, Sédar Senghor, and Julius Nyerere are not only three of the most cerebral figures of Africa’s “nationalist” movement, but unlike Amilcar Cabral they lived to lead their countries in the aftermath of formal colonial rule.

Contrary declarations notwithstanding, Senghor, Nkrumah, and Nyerere were acutely aware of the colonial epistemological project and the need to transcend it. Indeed, philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s re-reading of Negritude as epistemology argued that its salience lies in the dissolution of the binary opposition of subject and object in the logic of René Descartes. Whatever one’s take on the specificity of Senghor’s claims of Africa’s modes of knowing—by insisting on the interconnectedness of subject and object—he deliberately sought to mark out what is deficient in modern European epistemology and valorise African systems of knowledge. This epistemological project is built on a distinct African ontological premise.

Nkrumah and Nyerere were most acutely aware of the urgent need to displace the epistemic conditions of colonisation. In the case of Nkrumah, the imperative of epistemic decolonisation was most forcefully expressed in the 1962 launch of the Encyclopedia Africana project, initially with W.E.B. Du Bois as editor, and the 1963 launch of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Nkrumah’s 1963 speech at the launch of the Institute stressed the epistemic erasure at the heart of colonialism, linking political and epistemic freedom. “It is only in conditions of total freedom and independence from foreign rule and interferences that the aspirations of our people will see real fulfillment and the African genius finds its best expression,” Nkrumah argued. If colonialism involves the study of Africa from the standpoint of the colonialist, the new Institute of African Studies was charged with studying Africa from the standpoint of Africans. Its responsibility, Nkrumah argued, is the excavation, validation, restoration, and valorisation of African knowledge systems.

Nkrumah exhorted the staff and students at the new Institute to “embrace and develop those aspirations and responsibilities which are clearly essential for maintaining a progressive and dynamic African society.” The study of Africa’s “history, culture, and institutions, languages and arts” must be done, Nkrumah insisted, in “new African centered ways—in entire freedom from the propositions and presuppositions of the colonial epoch.” It is also worth remembering that the subtitle of the most philosophical of Nkrumah’s writings, Consciencism, is “philosophy and ideology for de-colonization.

Much is made about Nyerere surrounding “himself with foreign ‘Fabian socialists.’” Yet the most profound influence on Nyerere’s thoughts and practice was not the varieties of European “socialisms” but the “socialism” of the African village in which he was born and raised—with its norms of mutuality, convivial hospitality, and shared labour. Nyerere’s modes of sense-making (which after all is what epistemology means) was rooted in this ontology and norms of sociality.

For Nyerere, the ethics that are inherent in these norms of sociality stand in sharp contrast to the colonial project. It was, perhaps, in Education for Self-Reliance (1967) that Nyerere set out, most clearly, the task of the educational system in postcolonial Tanganyika, one that is not simply about the production of technical skill but the contents of its pedagogy. It is a pedagogy that requires the transformation of the inherited colonial system of education (Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism, 1968). The pedagogy is anchored on the three principles of Nyerere’s idea of a society framed by African socialism: “quality and respect for human dignity; sharing of the resources which are produced by our efforts; work by everyone and exploitation by none.” It frames the ethics of a new, postcolonial society.

Whatever their limitations, it was not for lack of aspiration and imagination. Nyerere is the one who most aptly communicated to us the responsibility of the current generation to pick up the baton where the older generation laid it down. The struggle for political independence was never understood as an end in itself. The ‘flag independence’ we so decry makes possible the task that subsequent generations must undertake and fulfill. The task of realising the postcolonial vision is as much a responsibility of the current generation as it was of the older generation.

Finally, as Mwalimu reminds us, on matters concerning Africa, “the sin of despair would be the most unforgivable.” Avoiding that sin starts with acknowledging and embracing the positive efforts of the older generation while advancing the pan-African project today.

This piece is part of the “Reclaiming Africa’s Early Post-Independence History” series from Post-Colonialisms Today (PCT), a research and advocacy project of activist-intellectuals on the continent recapturing progressive thought and policies from early post-independence Africa to address contemporary development challenges. Sign up for updates here.

This post is from a new partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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Revealed: MI6 ‘Misled’ Two Inquiries Into Arrest of Lee Rigby’s Killer

Three intelligence officers tell Declassified UK that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, tracked and arranged the arrest of Michael Adebolajo in Kenya, contradicting MI6’s testimony to two intelligence oversight reviews.

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Revealed: MI6 ‘Misled’ Two Inquiries Into Arrest of Lee Rigby’s Killer

Republication courtesy of Declassified UK / the Daily Maverick. First published by Declassified UK on 12 November 2020.

The town of Kizingitini on Paté island, just off Kenya’s north-eastern coast, is an otherwise unremarkable fishing village surrounded by mangroves. As a gateway to the Horn of Africa, the island inhabits an historically strategic location, with Arab and Portuguese merchants taking turns to settle the island.

In recent history, the island has enjoyed relative peace and, in a nod to its lush surroundings and history, its locals sing: “None who go to Paté returns; what returns is wailing”.

In November 2010, the island unexpectedly received international attention when British terror suspect, Michael Adebolajo, and five others were arrested there by Kenyan police. They were allegedly planning to cross into Somalia to join the al-Shabaab militant group responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in Somalia and Kenya.

It was one stage of a journey that would end with the murder of a British soldier on the streets of London and a parliamentary investigation into the handling of the case by the UK’s domestic security service MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), known as MI6.

The British government denied prior knowledge of – or involvement in – Adebolajo’s arrest and interrogation, which he claimed was abusive. However, defying expectations, and under controversial circumstances, the British High Commission in Nairobi intervened to bring Adebolajo back to the UK and save him from terror charges in Kenya.

Once back in Britain, Adebolajo claimed he was subject to ongoing harassment by MI5 and that the security agency tried to convince him to become a covert human intelligence source in order to spy on Islamic extremists.

Adebolajo was arrested in Kenya in 2010, but brought to UK and released where in 2013 he murdered British soldier, Lee Rigby

Less than three years after being returned to the UK, on 22 May 2013, Adebolajo and his accomplice Michael Adebowale hunted down Fusilier Lee Rigby, near his barracks in Woolwich, southeast London and brutally hacked him to death in broad daylight. Adebolajo and Adebowale were later convicted of murder and sentenced to life and 45 years in prison, respectively.

Claims that Adebolajo had previously been on the radar of the UK intelligence agencies prompted a parliamentary investigation into whether the killing of Rigby could have been prevented by the spy agencies.

The review by the UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), published in 2014, found mistakes in British security operations but concluded they were not “significant enough to have made a difference” in stopping the attack.

The ISC report, and another review conducted in 2016 by the Intelligence Services Commissioner, Mark Waller, both concluded that Adebolajo’s arrest was not procured by British intelligence.

But an investigation by Declassified in Kenya now provides a different picture, contradicting both the reviews and MI6’s testimony to them.

ARCTIC in Kenya

Both reviews covered the involvement of a body called ARCTIC, which the Intelligence Commissioner’s report described as “a Kenyan counter-terrorism intelligence unit which has a close working relationship with… HMG [Her Majesty’s Government].”

It continued: “Although ARCTIC can and does act independently of HMG and without its knowledge, their relationship appears to be much closer in practice than some of the more formal, theoretical statements about it might suggest.”

Declassified previously found that ARCTIC is in fact an MI6 liaison cell within Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) counter-terrorism unit and plays a key role in identifying, tracking, locating and interrogating terror suspects in Kenya.

ARCTIC undertakes undercover operations to produce actionable intelligence on targets who are then killed or captured by the police, including the clandestine CIA-backed paramilitary Kenyan police unit named the Rapid Response Team (RRT). Declassified has also revealed that ARCTIC is involved in raids involving alleged summary executions, such as the case of terror suspect Kassim Omollo in 2013.

Declassified can now reveal that MI6, working with Kenyan’s NIS intelligence officers, tracked and arranged for Adebolajo’s arrest, according to two NIS officers familiar with the operation, who made the admission independently of each other. Their testimony was further corroborated by a former CIA counter-terrorism officer familiar with operations in east Africa.

“For that specific case they [MI6] were here. I can’t deny that”, one of the NIS officers told Declassified. “If it were not for them I think it would have been difficult for us to do that job… That specific assignment was important. Because the mark [suspect] was from their place, their country.”

Declassified has learned that upon Adebolajo’s arrival in Kenya in October 2010, MI6 alerted Kenya’s NIS and sought approval from its Director to meet with two intelligence officers and brief them on the case at NIS’ headquarters in Nairobi.

MI6 told two government reviews it was not involved in Adebolajo’s arrest in Kenya

A team of Kenyan intelligence trackers then moved to the coastal city of Mombasa, where it tracked Adebolajo and his associates to Paté island and arranged for their arrest before they could sail off to Somalia, it was alleged.

An investigating officer with Kenya’s Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) familiar with Adebolajo’s case confirmed to Declassified that his arrest came after the local police officer in charge received intelligence about his movements.

British covert surveillance capabilities played a key role, the two NIS officers told Declassified. One of the officers spoke of the difficulty in tracking Adebolajo due to his awareness of electronic surveillance measures. Believing he could outsmart British and Kenyan intelligence, Adebolajo often relied in Kenya on email communications at internet cafes.

But Adebolajo was unaware of extensive British intelligence surveillance capabilities, including those of MI6’s sister agency, GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) — Britain’s signals intelligence organisation — which can conduct surveillance on targets.

The “GHOSTHUNTER” programme, run by GCHQ, operates in collaboration with the US National Security Agency, and can target internet and phone access by identified individuals, by intercepting communications transmitted through satellite terminals, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show.

GCHQ has made regular use of GHOSTHUNTER to locate “high value targets” for kill or capture operations in countries such as Kenya, Iraq, and Pakistan, according to documents leaked by Snowden.

MI6 team worked with Kenyan intelligence cell to track Adebolajo and arrange his arrest, Kenyan officers say

It is possible that, in addition to its own field surveillance capabilities, MI6 relied on the programme’s capabilities to track Adebolajo.

However, the two NIS officers confirmed to Declassified that the arrest was designed to appear exactly as the UK Intelligence Commissioner asserted in his review: “happenstance”.

The officer also confirmed that the ARCTIC intelligence officers who interrogated Adebolajo while in Kenyan police custody were the same officers later involved in the capture and interrogation of another Briton, Jermaine Grant, a year later.

Britain’s Foreign Office, which oversees MI6, declined to answer questions for this article, citing a policy of not commenting on intelligence matters.

Misleading inquiries

The Kenyan officers’ testimony contradicts the evidence MI6 provided to the ISC and the Intelligence Commissioner, and the conclusions of both reports. Evidence was given to the ISC by Sir John Sawers, then the head of MI6, and other MI6 officers.

The report of the ISC, which was chaired by former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, stated that “both SIS and MI5 were notified of Adebolajo’s arrest and detention. Prior to this, SIS and MI5 had been unaware that Adebolajo had travelled to Kenya”.

The Intelligence Commissioner’s report similarly concluded: “Neither SIS nor MI5 knew that Mr Adebolajo was in Kenya prior to his arrest there; and SIS had the operational lead thereafter but no contact with him”. The Commissioner, Mark Waller, put down Adebolajo’s arrest by the Paté island police to a “chance sighting”. Waller concluded that the individual MI6 officers who gave evidence to his inquiry “did their best to answer all my questions honestly and truthfully”.

He also described, somewhat inconsistently, MI6’s engagement with the review as “wholly inadequate”, stating that it “provided inaccurate and incomplete information and generally sought to ‘fence’ with and ‘close down’ lines of inquiry, rather than engage constructively.”

Evidence provided to Declassified supports this view. “That’s on them to lie to their oversight committee”, a former CIA counter-terrorism official with knowledge of Adebolajo’s case said of MI6’s claim of non-involvement.

“That whole case was a guy who had been on the radar and they lost him [prior to Lee Rigby’s killing]. For whatever reason, they couldn’t take it to the next level and 6 [MI6] is trying to cover their ass, no different than the FBI does and we do. We fuck up too.”

“That’s on them [MI6] to lie to their oversight committee”, former CIA counter-terrorism officer with knowledge of the case tells Declassified

The Intelligence Commissioner’s report contained hints of MI6’s involvement in the arrest before going on to dismiss them. It noted: “Intelligence Officer 1 [an MI6 officer] took a comment by one of his Kenyan counterparts as an indication that Mr Adebolajo had been arrested as the result of intelligence provided by an agent”. But the report concluded: “As it happens, there almost certainly was no agent”.

The report also stated that on 18 November 2010—three days before Adebolajo was arrested—an MI6 officer presumed to be based in Nairobi sent an email to MI6’s head office in London summarising Kenyan laws and procedures on the arrest, detention and deportation of British nationals suspected of extremism.

The email also outlined the process whereby MI6 and MI5 would work together on the identification of targets—and noted that the British government would work closely with ARCTIC on the planning of detention operations.

Accountability

MI6’s reluctance to disclose its role in Adebolajo’s arrest is likely to be explained by the desire to keep secret its extensive relationship with Kenya’s intelligence service, as recently revealed in a months-long investigation by Declassified. It may face questions about its involvement in Kenya’s bloody war on terror, which has seen hundreds of suspects killed or disappeared.

The ISC stated in its report: “Where HM Government has a close working relationship with counterterrorist units, they will share responsibility for those units’ actions.”

The Intelligence Commissioner agreed, stating: “I consider that any allegations of mistreatment made against ARCTIC would be of concern to HMG irrespective of whether it co-operated in or was aware of the underlying operation because of their close working relationship and intelligence-sharing arrangements.”

The MI6 ARCTIC liaison cell was also behind the intelligence that led to the capture of two Britons in Mombasa three years after Adebolajo’s arrest in 2013, and of a doctor and three others in Kenya in 2016, over alleged attempts to stage an anthrax attack in support of the Islamic State terrorist group, Declassified can also reveal.

A Kenyan officer familiar with the operation to arrest the anthrax attack suspects recalled a pre-meeting between ARCTIC officers, RRT paramilitaries and ATPU officers. The ARCTIC intelligence officers “gave us the type of the suspect, whom we were going to arrest, and—during the search—the items which we were to go for”, the officer said.

One of the Kenyan officers described the ARCTIC cell as “highly mobile, highly covert”, even by NIS standards, and composed of human intelligence field operatives and tech specialists. Alongside MI6, the CIA and Israel’s Mossad each have separate liaison cells within Kenya’s NIS. Each cell is composed of a team of Kenyan officers dedicated to working with the foreign intelligence agencies to counter terrorism in the country.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind told Declassified that its allegations were “very disturbing” but said he was “sceptical” of them, adding that it was “highly improbable” that MI6 officers deliberately lied about their involvement.

He stated: “It is not impossible that certain SIS officers were carrying out activities in Kenya that had not been authorised by London… [but]… my main reason for scepticism is that I cannot see what motive SIS would have had to lie to the ISC.”

Sir Malcolm added: “There would have been nothing embarrassing or controversial for SIS in volunteering this information. It had no relevance to the subsequent brutal murder of Lee Rigby. I do not see any credible motive for the Chief of SIS, and his colleagues, to have lied to a statutory Committee of Parliament.”

But Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who chaired one of the reviews, claims there was no “credible motive for the chief of SIS, and his colleagues, to have lied to a statutory Committee of Parliament”

The revelations cast significant doubt on the willingness of Britain’s intelligence oversight body, the ISC, as well as the Intelligence Commissioner, to fully examine Adebolajo’s claims, pursue leads and interview available witnesses as part of their reviews.

The Guardian previously reported that “the committee [ISC] is alleged to have reached its conclusions without speaking to a number of witnesses, including a family member and lawyers, who claim Adebolajo complained a year before the attack of repeated approaches by the security services”.

Tasnime Akunjee, a criminal defence solicitor who is familiar with Adebolajo’s case and represented a close friend of his who appeared on BBC Newsnight to tell Adebolajo’s story, told Declassified, “SIS [MI6] and the UK authorities have worked hand in glove with the Kenyan authorities, with the full knowledge that the Kenyan authorities have been accused many times of extrajudicial killings… That would be their motivation to lie; given that the UK authorities even in Guantanamo Bay have been found liable simply for being present when individuals were being tortured.”

Akunjee added: “Where there is intelligence sharing between countries, the rule is that nobody leaks. If it does leak from one particular side then that relationship is strained or then ceases. So there would not just be a motivation for the security services to keep a lid on this, but generally for the entire UK government to want to maintain that close working relationship with Kenya.”

Former Intelligence Commissioner Mark Waller told Declassified via an intermediary that “he has always felt it inappropriate to give interviews in relation to his role as Intelligence Services Commissioner”.

Sir John Sawers declined to comment. Adebolajo’s lawyers also declined to comment, citing the need to review the findings with their client.

Read Part 1 of this investigation here.
Read Part 2 of this investigation here.

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