A portrait of a Jihadist born and bred in Nairobi

On a hot afternoon sometimes in 2007, an executive meeting at one of Nairobi’s oldest mosques, Masjid Pumwani Riyadha, was violently cut short by hundreds of youth who threw out five executive officials, accusing them of corruption and mismanagement of the mosque’s development programmes.

The leader of those rowdy youths was a slightly built man by the name Sheikh Ahmed Iman Ali, and terror organisation Al-Shabaab took note of his religious fundamentalism and appointed him the de facto leader of its Kenyan cell.

That appointment, however, was not published to the world and only became apparent recently when Ahmed called for a jihad against Kenya over the country’s incursion into Somalia.

So how did a relatively quiet boy who grew up under the watchful eyes of Imams end up in the rank and file of a global terror network?

How could a man who was accorded the best education opportunities his parents could afford (he studied at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology) turn so radically?

It is not clear when he graduated from JKUAT. His associates, however, cite 1997 or 1998 as the probable years. The university declined to divulge any information about him, saying it was under instructions not to deal with the press.

“This is a matter of national security,” an official told us. “We have orders from the anti-terrorism police unit not to share out any information about him.”

After university, Sheikh Iman worked for Shell and Mobil as an engineer, but it was his exemplary performance as a community mobiliser that attracted the attention of many in Pumwani.

“All of a sudden, he was offering bursaries, waiving and subsidising fees for the sick at our clinic and taking responsibility for burying the dead,” Amina Hussein, whose son followed Sheikh Iman to Somalia, said.

The man had, in the blink of an eye, access to big money, but his followers say he never cared much about money.

He lived in a rented flat in Pumwani’s Highrise section with his wife and two children, and in the modest sitting room lay large pillows arranged against the walls in place of couches.

Whenever he had the time, he would join the local youth for a football match at a nearby dusty pitch. “He was a decidedly unimpressive striker,” recalls an official with Maratib Islamic Centre in Pumwani.

Such was his down-to-earth mien that he begged for lunch three days after he received Sh70,000 from a friend in Europe.

Instead of using the money for his upkeep, the official recalls, Sheikh Iman made a long list of those who wanted financial assistance and distributed the money to them.

A man (name withheld at his request) who was at Masjid Riyadha when Sheikh Iman overthrew the mosque’s committee says he had never seen such a violent ouster.

“We are here to build, not to destroy,” the man recalls an eloquent Sheikh Iman telling hundreds of worshippers outside the mosque after the incident.

At first glance, it seemed implausible that this athletic young preacher in those flimsily framed glasses popular with intellectuals could stage such a coup against the mosque’s respected old guard.

The mosque owns several properties in Gikomba Market, including a number of the storage facilities where market people keep their wares.