Kenyan authorities have frozen the financial accounts and cancelled the licenses of four bus companies suspected of aiding Al Shabaab, a Somalia-based terror group that is linked with Al Qaeda.
The Kenyan High Court confirmed Tuesday that the move did not go against any international or United Nations Security Council procedures, and that the decision to sanction the bus companies was to mitigate the terror threat in the country, The Standard (Kenya) reported on Wednesday.
The lawyers for the four companies in question — Sabrin, G-Coach, City to City, and E-Coach — have challenged the ruling, saying that the police Inspector General may not have had the authority to place the aforementioned companies on a terror-aiding suspects list.
“The Inspector General therefore acted in excess of his powers in conferring upon himself gazettement powers, under the aforesaid Act which he did not have. Be that as it may, even if one was to suppose that the Inspector General did have the statutory powers under the Prevention of Terrorism Act No. 30 of 2012 to gazette the said list, he still acted in contravention of the said Act,” the lawyers said in a statement, The Standard reported.
The companies have come under fire from the public at large after they were mentioned in the follow-up report to the Garissa University College terror attack.
On April 2, Al-Shabaab terrorists stormed the college, killing 147 people and injuring dozens more. It was the second deadliest attack in the history of the country, with the first being the 1998 simultaneous truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which were linked to deceased Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
Between July 8 and 10,The Kenyan court will rule whether to uphold the blacklisting of the four bus companies.
Al Shabaab continued its newest stream of attacks into Wednesday, when the group claimed responsibility for a car bomb explosion in Somalia targeting UAE officials, which resulted in the deaths of three individuals.
“We targeted enemy delegates from the UAE and we inflicted casualties upon them and their forces,” an Al Shabaab spokesman told Reuters.
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