Africa 24 Media Photography

Hundreds of Kenyan Muslim protesters took to the central business district in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, to demonstrate over the arrest of radical Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al Faisal. The demonstrators took to the streets in Nairobi after their noon prayers at the Jamia mosque on 15 January, demanding the release from police custody of the preacher, who had been in detention in the country after the Kenyan government had earlier failed to deport him.

Police charged at the rioters, surrounded the Jamiah mosque in central Nairobi and used water cannon and tear gas canisters to repel at hundreds of stone-throwing protesters as an ambulance picked up injured people. The Muslim youths wanted to present a petition to Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang and Prime Minister Raila Odinga's office, alleging that his Human Rights were being abused. The police however banned the march and intervened. A chaotic violence soon ensued as the anti-riot police engaged the protesters in running battles that caused heavy traffic snarl-ups and caught most Nairobi residents returning to work unawares. Police fired live rounds and teargas canisters to disperse the youth, who in turn pelted the officers with stones, as a huge pungent smoke engulfed and billowed the air in the central business district. The demonstrators chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest), waving banners that read, “Release Al Faisal, he is innocent,” while others displayed what was thought to be the flag of Somali extremist group al-Shabaab. At one time members of the public joined the police in fighting off the demonstrators. The riots claimed one life and left scores injured, while huge business incomes, estimated at Sh350 million ($4.6 million) were lost. It was after the chaotic violence that police raided Somali-inhabited areas in Nairobi and other towns and arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants. The swoop was triggered by the demonstrations against the detention of the Jamaican hate cleric, who was arrested by Kenya's Anti-Terrorist Police Unit in Mombasa, the heart of Muslim in Kenya on New Year’s Eve at a local mosque and was initially accused of going against the conditions of his visa. Faisal spent years travelling the UK preaching racial hatred urging his audience to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. He is also said to have encouraged Kenyan Muslims to join the extremist group al-Shabaab. Al-Faisal left the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, after three weeks of unrest, aboard a chartered Gulfstream jet flight ZSJGC312, and reportedly cost Kenya more than $500,000 on his deportation to Jamaica. The Muslim cleric has been on the global terror watch list since his release from a Britain jail where he served part of a four-year jail sentence for incitement to murder and stirring racial hatred. He had been stuck in Nairobi after major international airlines declined to fly him because his name appears on the terror watch list..

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