NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 6 — The United States government has issued a bounty of up to USD10 million for information on Maalim Ayman, unit leader of Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Al-Shabaab.
Ayman is believed to have planned several terrorist attacks in Kenya and Somalia including on a military installation in Lamu.
The US Department of State’s Reward for Justice (RFJ) programme said Ayman played a role in the planning of the January 2020 attack on the Kenyan military base in Lamu’s Manda Bay airfield.
“Maalim Ayman, leader of an Al-Shabaab unit, helped prepare the attack that killed three U.S. citizens at a Kenyan military facility in Manda Bay, Kenya in January 2020. Help us bring him to justice,” RFJ said in a statement on Friday.
The pre-dawn attack on Camp Simba located in Cooperative Security Location (CSL)in Manda Bay, left a U.S. soldier and two U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) contractors dead and wounded two other U.S. service members and a third DoD contractor.
In November 2020, the Department of State designated Ayman as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).
In February 2021, Ayman was also designated by the UN Security Council’s Somalia Sanctions Committee pursuant to paragraph 8(a) of resolution 1844 (2008).
The Manda Bay Airfield is part of a Kenyan Defence Forces military base utilized by U.S. armed forces to provide training and counterterrorism support to East African partners, respond to crises, and protect U.S. interests in the region.
In March 2022, the Pentagon released a review of the attack revealing how Kenyan troops were involved in supporting their U.S. counterparts to pacify the situation.
U.S. Africa Command’s Army Regulation 15-6 investigation and the Secretary of Defense-directed independent review of events revealed that the “proximate cause of the loss of life and damage to property was the attack by a massed force of 30 to 40 determined, disciplined, and well-resourced al-Shabaab fighters.”
“The investigation and independent review further found that no single point of failure resulted in the loss of life and damage to property, and no single act or omission would have avoided the attack,” the US Defense department said.
The US AFRICOM awarded three Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) Service Personnel with the Joint Service Commendation medals for their heroic actions during the attack.
The report on the Independent Review of the USAFRICOM15-6 Investigation revealed that the damages resulting from the attack are estimated at over 90 million US dollars.
According to the report the financial losses consist of six U.S. aircraft that were destroyed in the early minutes of the attack.
Additional damage to U.S. equipment, vehicles, and infrastructure amount to another 10 million dollars.
“These costs are initial rough estimates provided by the various contractors operating out of the CSL Manda Bay,’’ the report read in part.
However, the cost for the destruction of Kenyan aircraft was not listed.
The Defence Department said that following the attack, “U.S. Africa Command directed a series of measures to improve force protection at all locations on the continent and it continues to implement improvements to force protection, intelligence sharing, security force preparation, and mission command as identified by the 15-6 and independent review.”
U.S. Africa Command assigns responsibility to U.S. Air Forces-Africa for the integration of base support including force protection at CSL Manda Bay.
