DCI Detectives to Grill Most Wanted Kenyan Terror Suspect Captured in the DRC

Anti-terror detectives are seeking to interrogate Kenyan terror fugitive Rashid Mohammed Salim, who was captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last week.

Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) is liaising with Congolese authorities through Interpol on the arrest of the suspect.

Detectives want to question Salim in relation to the crimes he committed in the country before he fled the country in December 2020 and sneaked into DRC through Uganda, where he has been a key member of an Islamist rebel group dubbed Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

The suspect has been on DCI’s watchlist after he was charged with terror offenses in a Mombasa court and jumped bail, prompting the court to issue a warrant for his arrest. 

In 2016, Salim left Kenya for Turkey allegedly to join a Turkish university for undergraduate studies but he was deported the same year after he was arrested trying to cross over to Syria. He was released pending production of evidence from Turkish authorities.
 
He escaped police dragnet in an intelligence-led operation by anti-terror detectives in 2015 after explosives were recovered in a house he was occupying in Kwale county.

Salim was intercepted by detectives at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa in May 2019 as he attempted to flee the country to Sudan. 

He was charged with various terror offenses related to the explosives materials discovered during the raid in Kwale. The court granted him bail and he continued attending court sessions until his disappearance in 2020. 

“During interrogation, the terror suspect told detectives that he had been looking forward to fulfilling Jihad before going to paradise, where 72 virgins waited to surprise him,” DCI says.
 
Salim and two other wanted suspects sneaked into Congo on December 3rd, 2020, and informed his family through a short text message that he had gone to a far away land to fight Jihad and would never come back home.

He joined the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an insurgency that began in 1996 and which is responsible for hundreds of deaths of innocent civilians in DRC and western Uganda. 

The terror group is believed to be affiliated with the Islamic State after the latter claimed responsibility for an ADF attack in 2019 under the ‘Central Africa Province’, an administrative division of the Islamic State. 

Salim is said to be the author of propaganda videos depicting machete killings and arrests of civilians in the regions of eastern DRC and was previously captured on a video clip beheading a man.

On January 28th, the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC) announced the capture of Salim, describing him as one of the driving brains of the terrorist movement ADF.