A moderate Muslim cleric has been shot dead in Mombasa, the latest killing of a preacher in the Kenyan city.
Sheikh Mohammed Idris, Chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, was killed close to a mosque near his home by a group of gunmen.
Reports say he had previously been threatened by radical Muslim youths and had said he feared for his life.
He is the fourth prominent Muslim cleric to be shot dead in the city since 2012.
The others were accused of links to the Al-Qaeda linked Somali Islamist group Al-Shabab and their supporters accused the government of being behind their killings – charges the authorities denied.
Sheikh Idris had previously chaired the committee of the Masjid Mussa mosque in Mombasa, a position he left when the mosque became the centre for radical preachers such as Aboud Rogo, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2012.
The east African country, the region’s largest economy, is still reeling from an al Shabaab attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi in September in which at least 67 people were killed.
Local media reported in December that Sheikh Idris and other clerics had escaped an attack by more than 100 youths who were repulsed by the police.
CIPK has openly condemned extremism and the radicalization of Muslim youths in Kenya. Rogo and other like-minded preachers had called CIPK officials “traitors” to their religion.
“We have had several clerics killed before and many times these clerics have reported receiving direct threats … but we have not seen the government take very decisive measures to protect them or find the killers,” said Ahmed Kassim, a former chief kadhi, or judge, in Kenya’s Muslim court system.
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