NAIROBI, Kenya – Police have arrested an Islamic preacher suspected of involvement in the Nov. 28 homicide attacks on a hotel that killed 11 Kenyans and three Israeli tourists, authorities said Thursday.
Police picked up Aboud Rogo, 34, on Wednesday in the Likoni district of Mombasa and were taking him to Nairobi for questioning, police spokesman Gideon Kibunja said.
Last month, Mohamed Kubwa, who also is in police custody, told The Associated Press that his cousin Rogo had introduced his family to Abdul Karim -- believed to be fugitive Al Qaeda operative Fazul Abdullah Mohammed.
Fazul has been indicted for the simultaneous car bombings outside American embassies in Kenya and neighboring Tanzania in 1988 that killed some 230 people, including 12 Americans.
Mohamed Kubwa identified Fazul in an FBI photo, in the clearest indication yet of a link between the Nov. 28 attacks and the embassy bombings.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Nov. 28 homicide attack on the coastal Paradise Hotel Paradise hotel crowded with Israelis as well as the simultaneous missile attack on an Israeli jetliner as it took off from Mombasa airport. Eleven Kenyans and three Israelis were killed in the blast at the hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. The missiles missed the airliner.
Last week, Mohamed Kubwa and his father were charged with harboring an illegal alien -- Abdul Karim. They pleaded innocent, were denied bail and have remained in jail. Both have denied any involvement in the attacks.
His father told The Associated Press last month his family doesn't know much about Abdul Karim, who married his teenage daughter before he disappeared in January -- only that the man had relatives in Mombasa's Tudor neighborhood, where police believe the bomb used in the Nov. 28 attack was built.
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