NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 17 – Three people have been arrested and are being questioned over possible links to Sunday’s grenade attack at Uhuru Park where six people were killed and more than 100 others wounded, police said.
A senior police officer involved in the investigation told Capital News the suspects were arrested on Wednesday afternoon after detectives traced one of them via mobile phone communication data.
“A text message sent by one of them led us to the others, but we don’t need to go into those details,” the officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said. “The most important thing is that we have suspects in custody and they are helping us a lot.”
He said the suspects were picked from Kikuyu and Kinoo area after “an intensive search that started on Tuesday morning.”
On Thursday, police investigating the blast said they were still interrogating the suspects and analysing the communication data.
“We are making very good progress and more arrests will be made. We are under instructions to expedite this investigation,” another officer involved in the probe said.
Internal Security Minister George Saitoti on Wednesday told Parliament that the government would go to great lengths to comprehensively investigate the matter.
“The directives are very clear that investigations must be carried out very quickly and we get the report. It is not going to be business as usual,” Prof Saitoti said.
He added: “We have put together a very strong team of experts in the police, in the intelligence and those in the army.”
“Our investigations are focused on a broad spectrum of individuals and I don’t think we should speculate,” Prof Saitoti said.
The Minister was however taken to task by Members of Parliament who accused the police of a security breach during Sunday’s rally.
Police have offered a Sh500,000 reward to anyone with information that may lead to the arrest of those who planned and executed the blast at Uhuru Park.
We could not immediately establish if the Wednesday arrest of three people was a result of information given by the public who would be paid the Sh500,000 reward or just police intelligence.