Al-Shabaab, the terrorist group which carried out the recent attack in a mall in Nairobi, is planning to target Britain next, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.
A hate preacher wanted for recruiting terrorists to the group that massacred civilians at the Westgate mall last week, warned in an interview with the newspaper that Britain was the next target for the Somali Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Abubaker Shariff Ahmed, who is known to his followers by the nickname Makaburi, meaning graveyard, said terrorists are planning to murder innocent Britons on their mission to impose Sharia law across the world.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he named Prime Minister David Cameron as a specific target for Al-Shabaab.
Asked if terror would be brought to Britain, Makaburi said. “Yes. The British will be targeted personally. That means tourists on the streets will be killed. You will all die.”
He added, “‘The British should be taken out. Your presidents and your cabinets, they are guilty. Obama is a mass murderer. I would give my life to get his. Same thing with David Cameron. Yes, they should be killed.”
Makaburi’s claims came as Cameron revealed he had ordered security and intelligence chiefs to draw up plans to deal with a terrorist attack on British shopping centers.
The Prime Minister, who chaired meetings of the Cobra crisis committee last week, said he had no intelligence of plans for an “imminent” attack in Britain.
But asked whether he was concerned that British-based Somalis might export terror to the UK, Cameron said, according to the Daily Mail, “There is always a worry of that and there is a hotbed of terrorism in Somalia that spills over into other countries.”
Makaburi has not yet been questioned by officials in Kenya over the Westgate attack, despite being accused by the UN of being “a leading facilitator and recruiter” of young terrorists in the region.
While he is said to have recruited “White Widow” Samantha Lewthwaite to the group, he insisted that he does not know where she is or whether she was involved in the latest attack.
Kenyan police announced last week that Lewthwaite has been added to the list of names wanted by Interpol.
Lewthwaite is the daughter of a British army soldier, who was born in Northern Ireland and spent her teenage years living in a quaint English village. She later converted to Islam and is the widow of one of "7/7 bombers" who attacked London's transportation system in July 2005.
Makaburi warned that the Westgate siege was just the beginning of a series of attacks in revenge for Western intervention in Muslim countries.
“It is justified,” he told the Daily Mail, adding, “If I cannot live with my family, why should the British live with their families?”