Tuesday December 3, 2019
WASHINGTON (HOL) - U.S Federal authorities have reaffirmed the $5 million bounty on a U.S citizen believed to be leading Al-Shabaab’s explosives manufacture in Somalia.
U.S media reported Tuesday the FBI unsealed new indictments on the 37-year-old Jehad Serwan Mostafa who is now said to be the highest-ranking US citizen fighting overseas with a foreign terrorist organisation.
Mostafa who has been in the list of most wanted for nine years now is reported to have travelled to Yemen in 2004 and later to Somalia where he fought against Ethiopian forces and has since risen in Al-Shabaab’s ranks.
The new indictments allege Mostafa’s actions within Al-Shabaab has ‘led to hundreds of innocent victims being hurt or killed in Africa.’
The UN said last month Al-Shabaab now has the capacity to manufacture local bombs deploying local technologies and skills.
“For the first time, post-blast laboratory analyses ... indicate a clear shift in al Shabaab construction methods, away from the use of military-grade explosives and toward HME (home-made explosives,” the UN Panel of Experts said in a report release last month.
The group deployed one of its largest bombs in October 2017 killing over 600 people in Mogadishu and injured over 300 others.
Though it never claimed responsibility, Somali government and western intelligence agencies placed blamed on Al-Shabaab’s doors.