Members of an alleged london cell of the Al Shabab terrorist group, behind the recent shopping mall siege in Kenya, have secretly been stripped of British citizenship.
At least four men with links to the group behind the Nairobi massacre have had their British passports removed by UK Home Secretary Theresa May on national security grounds.
A fifth man from london with terrorist links is using human rights legislation to block his deportation to his native Ethiopia, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.
Those stripped of British citizenship rights include Bilal al-Berjawi, who first travelled to Somalia — the base of Al Shabab — in 2007 and rose up the ranks to become briefly Al Shabab’s second-in-command.
Berjawi, who was born in lebanon, also raised funds in Britain for the terrorist group.His neighbour in west london and a childhood friend was Mohamed Sakr, who also joined Al Shabab. Berjawi and Sakr, a dual British-Egyptian national, controversially lost their citizenship in 2010 while they were abroad.
Sakr’s parents were told by the Home Office that the decision was based on their son’s involvement in “terrorism- related activity”, the report claims. last year Berjawi, 27, and Sakr, 26, were killed within a month of each other by US drone strikes in Somalia.
A third friend, Walla Rahman, 31, also from west london, has been linked by the Ugandan media to bombings claimed by Al Shabab in Kampala in July 2010.
A total of 74 people died in the attacks as they watched the World Cup final at two bars. Rahman’s father, Ismat, told that his son had also been stripped of his British citizenship. PTI