In a sweeping operation that covered multiple East African countries, Afripol announced the arrest of 37 terrorism suspects and the destruction of weapons, including a missile and antitank armaments.
The operation in November and December 2024 netted members of the Islamic State group (IS) and al-Shabaab, along with other foreign fighters. Working with Interpol, Afripol authorities made arrests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania.
In the DRC, police arrested four alleged members of the Allied Democratic Forces and two associates. They also captured and destroyed a missile and antitank device abandoned by terrorists.
In Kenya, authorities arrested 17 people, including two suspected IS members, several foreign fighters, and more people involved in terrorism financing, radicalization and propaganda.
In Somalia, authorities arrested three people, including a suspected bombmaker for an intelligence unit of al-Shabaab, who had been planting improvised explosive devices to target law enforcement officers and Soldiers. Another suspect was an al-Shabaab operative believed to have attacked several police checkpoints with hand grenades.
In Tanzania, police arrested an alleged member of IS-Mozambique and a Ugandan national who tried to join
a terrorist group in Mozambique.
Afripol also worked with law enforcement authorities in Djibouti, Mozambique, South Africa and Uganda to capture the terrorism suspects. The arrests were part of a five-day border security operation that used Interpol databases to search for people suspected of major crimes, including fraud, money laundering and robbery.
The East African counterterrorism operation came after a separate joint Afripol-Interpol investigation in September and October 2024 that resulted in the arrests of more than 1,000 people suspected of cybercrimes across 19 Sub-Saharan countries. Operation Serengeti broke up more than 134,000 scam operations that had stolen more than $193 million from victims worldwide.