BICOM

A Kenyan court yesterday charged two Iranians and their Kenyan driver with collecting information in order to carry out a terror attack on Israel’s embassy in the capital Nairobi.

According to the charges read out in court, the two Iranians, Sayed Nasrollah Ebrahimi and Abdolhosein Ghola Safafe, “were found taking video clips of the Israeli embassy … for the use in the commission of a terrorist act”. Their driver Moses Keyah Mmboga was accused of “abetting terrorism”.

Their lawyer told the court: “My clients pleaded not guilty and have been detained by the ATPU (Kenya’s Anti Terrorism Police Unit) for further interrogation.”

The three men were in an Iranian embassy car when they were arrested on Tuesday. They had been visiting two imprisoned Iranians who were convicted of planning attacks on Western targets in Kenya in 2013. Following the visit, the Iranian suspects are thought to have taken pictures of the Israeli embassy on their mobile phones.

Although they were in an embassy car, the diplomatic status of the accused Iranians remains unclear. Kenyan anti-terror officials said that they are members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, while the Kenyan prosecutor said that the two Iranians were visiting Kenya, but gave no further details. There has been no confirmation of the suspects’ identity by Iranian officials. There has also been no comment from Israel’s Foreign Ministry on the arrests.

Israelis in Kenya have previously been targeted by Islamist terrorists. In 2002, a hotel in Mombassa was bombed soon after a group of Israeli tourists had arrived, killing 13 people including two Israelis. At the same time, terrorists fired surface to air missiles at an Israeli commercial flight taking off from Mobassa’s airport. The rockets missed their target.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah group has also targeted Israeli interests abroad. Twice since 2013, Cypriot courts have convicted Hezbollah operatives for planning a bomb attack against Israelis on the island. In 2012, a Hezbollah bus bomb killed five Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas.