De­tec­tives from the Anti-Ter­ror­ism Po­lice Unit (ATPU) have ar­rested a sus­pected Al-Shabaab re­cruiter in Mom­basa.

The 45-year-old man was de­tained for al­legedly be­ing one of the peo­ple fund­ing and re­cruit­ing youths to join the Al-Qaeda linked ter­ror group.

He was picked up for ques­tion­ing from a restau­rant near Likoni and dri­ven to his house on Sat­ur­day evening where a search was con­ducted for vi­tal clues. Mom­basa County Com­man­der Robert Ki­tur con­firmed the ar­rest but could not di­vulge more in­for­ma­tion.

The sus­pect is the chair­man of Likoni Com­mu­nity De­vel­op­ment Sacco that was reg­is­tered last year, and which po­lice be­lieve has been used to re­cruit youths to join the Al-Shabaab group.

His fam­ily mem­bers who ad­dressed jour­nal­ists at Makupa Po­lice Sta­tion how­ever main­tained that he is in­no­cent say­ing he had no ties with Al-Shabaab or any other crim­i­nal gangs.

“He is in­no­cent…all the ac­cu­sa­tions lev­elled against him are false,” one of the fam­ily mem­bers said.

On April 8, for­eign ex­change bu­reaus and money trans­fer agen­cies listed along­side firms and in­di­vid­u­als listed on a ter­ror watch list in the Kenya Gazette closed shop fol­low­ing a di­rec­tive by the gov­ern­ment.

The com­pa­nies listed as en­ti­ties sus­pected to be as­so­ci­ated with Al-Shabaab were or­dered to ex­plain to the gov­ern­ment their own­ers and as­so­ci­ates.