Mr Graveyard goes there IT WAS clear that Abubakar Sheikh Ibrahim Shariff was a marked man. Vehicles from Kenya’s anti-terror police unit (ATPU) were always being mended in the garage opposite his compound in the port city of Mombasa. The sheikh’s neighbour, a mechanic, got good custom from the ATPU in return for watching the radical preacher.The mechanic will now have to find customers elsewhere. On April 1st Mr Shariff, known by the nickname “Makaburi” (meaning graveyard in Swahili), was shot dead by unidentified men as he waited to make a court appearance.His death was widely foretold, not least by himself. Sitting in his cramped office in November, he said it was “only a matter of time” before he would be killed, just as other radical Kenyan imams had been. “The government is murdering us,” he said matter-of-factly. A surprisingly jovial presence, he lived under virtual house arrest for his last two years, receiving visitors in his basement home and surfing the internet while watching comings and goings on a security camera. Makaburi got his nickname for threatening to disinter the graves of Sufi Muslims whose burial rites...
From The Economist: Middle East and Africa
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