(UKPA)

The head of Jamaica’s Muslim community has expressed alarm over the pending return of a radical cleric who served time in a British prison for urging the killing of Americans, Christians, Hindus and Jews.

Sheik Abudllah el-Faisal, who was born in Jamaica, was arrested in Kenya on New Year’s Eve by anti-terrorism police as he was leaving a mosque in a coastal town. Officials say he wil be deported to Jamaica because of his history of extremist activities.

“I am extremely concerned about his return. We have no idea with whom he has been associating with for more than a year,” said Mustafa Muhammad from Kingston, where he is organizing an emergency meeting of Jamaican Muslims to discuss el-Faisal.

There is no immediate date for the deportation. El-Faisal is stuck in the East African nation because other nations, including South Africa, Tanzania and Britain, are refusing to allow him to transit through their countries.

Mr Muhammad, who leads Jamaica’s Islamic council that has 4,600 members and 10 mosques, said the Caribbean island’s Muslims are worried about el-Faisal’s apparently secretive travels through Africa.

Kenyan officials say el-Faisal traveled from Nigeria through Angola, Malawi, Swaziland, Mozambique and Tanzania by road before entering Kenya. They say el-Faisal likely was trying to avoid detection because he is on an international watch list of terrorism suspects.

Mr Muhammad said that when el-Faisal was deported to Jamaica in 2007 after a prison term in Britain, he told the extremist cleric that his views were unacceptable and under no circumstances would council authorities allow him to preach in mosques under its umbrella.

He said El-Faisal showed “no remorse” for his calls for violent jihad after serving four years for incitement to murder and stirring racial hatred.

“He said he didn’t think he had ever done anything wrong,” Muhammad said.

Britain has said el-Faisal’s teachings heavily influenced one of the bombers who carried out the 2005 transport network bombings in London that killed 52 people. Internet postings purportedly written by a Nigerian charged with trying to bomb a US airliner on Christmas Day refer to el-Faisal as a cleric he had listened to.

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