A Kenyan man was shot dead last week outside the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi after he stabbed a GSU police officer guarding the compound.
Police identified the knife-wielder as Abdimahat Ibrahim Hassan, a 22 year-old from Wajir, in northern Kenya. Much of northern Kenya has been inhabited by ethnic Somalis before and since the nation’s independence in 1963. Police and some reporters were quick to conclude the ethnic Somali as belonging to the militant group, Al-Shabaab.
While an officer with the GSU, the paramilitary wing of Kenyan National Police Service, reportedly shot the man, photos from the incident reveal the presence of FBI agents, and armed foreign security detail at the embassy. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) is the federal law and security arm of the U.S. Department of State and the lead law enforcement organization overseas. Its duties include protecting U.S. diplomatic missions and U.S. diplomats and visiting foreign dignitaries, conducting criminal, counter-terror and counter-intelligence investigations abroad; advising U.S ambassadors on security matters.
The DSS sometimes outsources to private military/security companies. Blackwater is the most controversial of these. In 2015, four former Blackwater security guards received long prison sentences last year for the fatal shooting of 14 civilians in Iraq in 2007.
The State Department currently contracts companies under the umbrella company, Constellis Group, founded in 2003 by U.S. Army Special Forces veterans. In 2014 Constellis acquired Academi (formerly Blackwater). A source close to Constellis intimated that while the company operates in Kenya, it does not provide security support at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
