New team to deal with terror

Murithi Mutiga

The government has set up an elite Anti-Corruption, Economic Crimes, Serious Fraud and Asset Forfeiture department, which is expected to play a lead role in the wider war against terrorism.

The unit, to be headed by Attorney-General Amos Wako and Director of Public Prosecutions Philip Murgor, has taken an entire floor at the NSSF Building , Nairobi , and is putting together a framework to ensure specialised Kenyan prosecutors have world-class training and facilities to prosecute terror related cases.

The unit will prosecute cases by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, the Bank Fraud Department of the Central Bank of Kenya and other law enforcement agencies.

A key function of the department will be to assist in curbing the illicit flow of funds to terrorist agencies.

Speaking at the agency offices last week, Murgor said the unit was already fully operational.

"We have 16 state counsel in our employ and have capacity for 20 more. We are setting up a state-of-the art centre to ensure the counsel working here have nothing short of the highest level of training and expertise. We already have a fully networked computer system and will soon have specialised software in case management and a fully stocked library."

The setting up of the centre, which was funded by USAid, will be viewed as a robust response by the government to criticisms that its infrastructure was too weak to deal with international terrorism.

Murgor, admitting that Kenyan prosecutors hardly boast the level of expertise of their counterparts in Israel , Britain and the United States as far as terror was concerned, pointed out that an active training programme for lawyers was under way, with facilitation from friendly foreign governments.

And in a further bid to streamline counter-terrorism measures, reforms under the Governance Justice and Law and Order Sector intend to bring intelligence, prosecution and investigation agencies together for greater harmony.

The unification aims at bridging the divisions between the three agencies, which have been exploited by criminal networks in the past, most spectacularly in international terrorism.

If the reforms are implemented in Kenya , they will closely mirror changes put in place in the US after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Before then, US intelligence agencies had been under no obligation to share terror-related intelligence with law enforcement and prosecution agencies.

After the attacks, however, and following the recommendations of a bipartisan inquiry set up to investigate the failure of the country's security agencies to avert the attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Attorney-General now work together to combat terrorism.

In recent months, the Department of Public Prosecutions, the Kenya Police Department and the National Counter-Terrorism Centre have been involved in consultations aimed at creating a more efficient and effective way of dealing with the threat posed by terrorism.

Although it is hard to argue against the effectiveness of a cumulative effort by disparate agencies to combat terror, however, some analysts say much more fundamental changes need to be put in place to yield tangible results.

Morale in the public service over their terms of service, for example, is a key issue.

Civil servants in Kenya still receive meager pay, which stagnated under the old Kanu regime.

Pay rises for some cadres of government have, however, spawned a situation where a police inspector in Kenya earns more than a state counsel at entry level in the Department of Public Prosecutions.