Kenyan groups threaten protest over Muslim killing

MOMBASA, Kenya: Two prominent Kenyan rights groups threatened on Wednesday to stage street protests in the port city of Mombasa unless the government met a Saturday deadline to say who had killed a prominent Muslim.

Armed police patrolled the streets of Kenya’s port city Mombasa on Wednesday following the assassination of the Islamic scholar, who was buried as a martyr. But Kenya’s second city, a key transport hub for East Africa and a popular tourist destination, was reported calm, with the slain cleric’s mosque having broadcast appeals for restraint among his supporters.

The ultimatum was issued a day after the drive-by shooting of Abubakar Shariff, also known as Makaburi, who the United States and UN Security Council accuse of supporting the Somali militant group Al-Shabab. Mombasa-based Muslims for Human Rights (Muhuri) and Haki Africa have in the past both accused Kenya’s Anti-Terror Police Unit (ATPU) of carrying out extra-judicial killings of well-known Muslims, a charge the police have always strongly denied.

Makaburi had told journalists he expected to be assassinated by the police. Makaburi’s close ally and friend, preacher Aboud Rogo, was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2012