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Kenya Deports Muslim Cleric Said to Be Linked to Terrorists

A Jamaican-born Muslim cleric whose online sermons drew the attention of a Nigerian man accused of trying to bring down an American airliner was deported Thursday from Kenya, where he had been arrested, according to news reports. He was sent to Gambia, where he was expected to stay briefly before returning to Jamaica.

The authorities in Kenya, where the cleric, Abdullah el-Faisal, was arrested on Sunday as he traveled through the country on a preaching tour, were quoted by news agencies as saying that Mr. Faisal’s history of radical statements and his previous connections with convicted terrorists had made him a serious threat to Kenya’s security.

“It is in the public’s interest not to have him here,” the country’s immigration minister, Otieno Kajwang, told The Associated Press.

In the 1990s, Mr. Faisal preached occasionally at the Brixton mosque in south London later attended by the so-called shoe bomber, Richard C. Reid, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court on charges stemming from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But Abdulhaq Addae, a spokesman for the mosque, said Mr. Faisal had never been the imam there and had had strained relations with many mainstream worshippers because of his radicalism. In a telephone interview Friday, Mr. Addae also said Mr. Faisal had ceased to attend the mosque several years before Mr. Reid and Mr. Moussaoui prayed there.

In 2003, Mr. Faisal was convicted in Britain of inciting racial hatred in speeches that urged his followers to kill Hindus, Christians, Jews and Americans, and he was accused of influencing one of the bombers who struck the London transit system in July 2005. Britain deported him to Jamaica in May 2007, part of the way through his seven-year prison sentence.

Mr. Faisal’s name also surfaced in investigations into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to attack a Northwest Airlines flight on Dec. 25.

Although Mr. Faisal was not charged with any crime in Kenya, the authorities there acted swiftly to remove him this week, and said he should not have been allowed to enter the country.

According to news reports from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Mr. Faisal was not stopped as he crossed into Kenya from Tanzania because computers at the border had been temporarily disconnected from a database that allows immigration officials to run background checks.

Mr. Faisal’s name is on an international terrorism watch list, Kenyan officials told The Associated Press.

Kenyan authorities put Mr. Faisal on a plane to Lagos, Nigeria, on Thursday, according to news reports. From there, he was scheduled to fly to the small West African nation of Gambia.

Several countries, including the United States, refused to allow Mr. Faisal to pass through their borders, but Gambian authorities agreed to help him return to Jamaica, Mr. Kajwang told The A.P. Jamaica, for its part, said it would take him in.

“He’s free to come to Jamaica,” the island’s foreign minister, Kenneth Baugh, told a Jamaican radio station. “It’s his home.”

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Kenya Deports Muslim Cleric Said to Be Linked to Terrorists. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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