Police arrest pastor, seize bomb material

Kenya police have arrested two men, one of them a pastor, and recovered bomb material after they intercepted a car they were travelling in.

Nairobi Provincial Police Officer Anthony Kibuchi said the two were stopped by police, acting on a tip off, on Kiambu road, Nairobi Saturday afternoon.

"Two people have been intercepted on Kiambu Road at the junction of getting into Runda. They were driving a Nissan Sunny car and in the car police officers found one kilogramme of ammonium nitrate, a safety fuse and a detonator … that’s a complete bomb," he said.

"They have been arrested and are under interrogation."

Puzzled

He said the police were puzzled by the incident since they could not explain why "a pastor had these explosives".

The pastor belongs to a church in Githunguri.

The incident comes just a week after police shot dead a man and retrieved 300 detonators from him in Ongata Rongai, Nairobi.

The discovery comes barely two days after The Nation unearthed how easy it was to obtain commercial explosives in the Kenyan capital.

For Sh1,000, reporters from the newspaper bought enough material to make a bomb powerful enough to blow up a large room. The sale of such substances is supposed to be tightly controlled in law.

Bomb expert Charles Juma said commercial detonators were available for Sh5 in Tanzania, which has a large mining industry. The detonators are readily sold on the black market in Kenya and Uganda as well.

In the controlled shops in Nairobi, they cost Sh150.

Dead end

Mr Juma demonstrated how, using ammonium nitrate, a fertiliser available in the market in unlimited quantities, a person with some training can make a powerful bomb using the detonators and fuses illegally being sold in the country.

A month ago, a prayer meeting cum No rally in Nairobi's Uhuru Park turned tragic after two explosions tore through the crowd killing six people and injuring many others.