•He said the man would soon be presented to police officers to help with the investigation as efforts to recover the vehicle continue.
•The group’s intelligence operatives often monitor the movement of their targets, work their way to the inner circle, and study their routine.
A top Mandera security official evaded abduction by Al Shabaab by a whisker after the group's operatives ambushed the driver and stole his official car 30 days ago.
Deputy county commissioner Patrick Meso said he had just come from a joint cross-border security meeting in Bulla Hawa moments before his driver was attacked.
“I’m not sure if they were after me, but that's possible,” he said.
The driver claimed a person familiar to him stole the car and drove it across the border to war-torn Somalia.
It turned out the assailant was an Al Shabaab intelligence operative who had spied on the deputy county commissioner for a while.
“This person was very close to my driver. He is the one who installed my Dstv decoder in the office and at my residence,” he said.
Even though active Al Shabaab combatants are not common in the county, they have their intelligence operatives strewn all over, some embedded in government offices and public spaces.
“They are all over, even in our offices but are not the ones who attack. They relay the collected information for the combatants to act on,” he said.
“Given the trust he had won, the driver picked him up on the road to the car wash and along the way, picked an accomplice. They later took over control of the vehicle and sped to the border where people were waiting for the car with motorbikes. They put the motorbikes into the car and sped off,” he said.
He said the man would soon be presented to police officers to help with the investigation as efforts to recover the vehicle continue.
“He is still being held by Somalia officials who want to know who his accomplices were and what they were up to,” he said.
The terror group’s intelligence operatives often monitor the movement of their targets, work their way to the inner circle, and study their routine.
Meso, however, said the crime levels are low in the county, thanks to the collaboration between the county’s security establishment and their cross-border counterparts.
Petty crimes are non-existent but defilement is the major concern.
“Defilement is the major issue here, and it draws from the local religious and cultural orientation. The old men marry underage girls because they largely do not have birth certificates and IDs.”
Meso also said part of the security nightmare in the county is the porous border with Somalia and the banning of the vetting committees that were crucial in the issuance of IDs.
“The vetting committees would be crucial in background checks before giving out IDs. But now that they don't exist, the IDs are landing into the wrong hands.”
He said non-locals are easy targets because of their different dress code.
“You can remove someone from their cultural setting but not their culture from him. The non-locals come here and put on mini-skirts and revealing clothes and this angers the deeply conservative culture here, riling up anger against them.”
“Particularly the quarry workers, they rent apartment blocks and live in groups. They also crowd out and like drinking alcohol in the open in a county with no bars. This makes them soft targets,” Meso said.