Kenya deports Jamaican Muslim cleric to Gambia

Kenyan immigration authorities deported a Jamaican Muslim cleric to Gambia on Thursday because they believed he had links to terrorism, the government said.

“Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal has chosen to go to Gambia and that country accepted to receive him. We have already deported him,” Kenyan Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang told reporters.

Faisal was visiting Kenya for a preaching tour, but intelligence officials in the east African country feared his speeches would have encouraged radicalism in a nation that has suffered two al Qaeda-linked attacks. Police sources said he was placed on a flight to West Africa early on Thursday.

Faisal was also deported from Britain in 2007 for preaching racial hatred and urging his audiences to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. He was arrested in Kenya last week.

Attacks in Kenya include a 1998 bomb at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, as well as a hotel bombing and a botched missile attack on an Israeli airliner leaving Kenya’s Mombasa airport in 2002.

Reuters.