UN confirms Eritrea behind AU summit attack plot in Ethiopia
By Tigrai Online
July 28 2011
Eritrea was behind a plot to attack an African Union summit in Ethiopia in January and is bankrolling al Qaeda-linked Somali rebels through its embassy in Kenya, according to a U.N. report.
A U.N. Monitoring Group report on Somalia and Eritrea said the Red Sea state's intelligence personnel were active in Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya and Somalia, and that the country's actions posed a threat to security and peace in the region.
The U.N. report said all but one of the people arrested received all their training and orders directly from Eritrean officers. The other detainee was also in regular contact with an Ethiopian rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).
However, in an interview with U.N. investigators, one of the men arrested, Omar Idriss Mohamed, said the aim was not to kill African leaders but to show them that Ethiopia was not safe.
According to the U.N. report, Omar is an OLF member who was approached by the Eritrean security services though Colonel Gemachew. Omar, who visited Eritrea in 2009 and 2010, became the Addis team leader for the plot.
The report also included copies of payments slips from Eritrean officials in Kenya's capital Nairobi to known members of Somali rebel group al Shabaab. It said the payments were to the tune of $80,000 (48,975 pounds) a month.
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