Mombasa, KENYA: Detectives in Likoni Mombasa county have confirmed four of the 14 suspected criminals arrested on Sunday belong to the notorious criminal gang of Watalia.
Watalia is one of the criminal gangs among the 90 criminal gangs countrywide, recently outlawed by Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaiserry.
Likoni police chief Willy Simba confirmed the 4 suspects after interrogating them for hours.
The suspects were arrested at the Ferry screening machine and crude weapons recovered in a crackdown targeting criminal gangs in the sub-county.
“After long time of interrogation, we discovered that the four belong to Watalia outlawed gang,they were armed with machetes which you are seeing them here,this is dangerous gang and if we had not swung into action they would have caused mayhem,” said police boss during press briefing at the station.
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Police recover 14 machetes and 11 rolls of bhang from the suspects.
Upon interrogation, the suspects told police they were in the business of looking for money by attacking people and robbing them.
Mr Simba said they had received intelligence report on the suspects and they move swiftly and mobilized security agents both in uniform and civilian who carried out physical search on whoever who were crossing the channel at the screening area.
He said a special police unit dubbed kifaru have been formed to carry out a crackdown to weed out all criminal gangs terrorizing residents.
The special unit comprised of GSU officers,Regular police and Administration police.
The suspects will be arraigned in court on Tuesday.
