A senior official in Kenya urged the United States and Britain on Friday to relax a security alert in East Africa, insisting that his country had “nipped in the bud” potential terrorist operations in Somalia and Kenya. . He noted that Kenya had sent forces by helicopter to seize a senior Al Qaeda suspect in a raid on Mogadishu, the Somali capital. . “This country is not as unsafe as the world is meant to believe,” Foreign Minister Stephen Musyoka said. He said that during the raid in Mogadishu in March, anti-terrorist forces captured a suspected Qaeda operative now believed to be in custody in the United States. . Musyoka denied reports outside Kenya that the raid – which he first disclosed to the Kenyan Parliament in March – had been mounted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . Other officials said the raid had been mounted by Kenyan forces with allied groups among the feuding militias in lawless Somalia. At the time in mid-March, the suspect was identified as Suliman Abdalla Salim Hemed. He is also said to have used the alias Isse as a surname and some news reports here have identified him as a Yemeni citizen. American officials have declined to comment on the raid. Full Story
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