The widow of one of the 14 Riverside attackers was on Friday night arrested by police in her house in Bakarani, Mombasa.
Suhaila Mwalim Bakari, was taken into police custody following the identification of her husband, Mahir Khalid Riziki, as the suicide bomber in the Tuesday attack.
It is not clear whether Suhaila became radicalised, but investigators say she was a confidant of her husband, lending her ears to his trials and tribulations while in Somalia everytime he called her, demanding details about her current life while he remained in hinding.
For three years, the petite, light skinned woman knew her husband who was in Somalia, wanted by police over terror related activities at the Coast and with a Sh2 million bounty on his head.
And when her husband was suspected to have gone to Mombasa towards the end of last year as part of a cell tasked with orchestrating an attack at the Coast, she kept the information to herself, not bothering to inform authorities of his movements and least bothered about the bloody attacks he is said to have masterminded.
Residents say dozens of officers swarmed the impoverished Bakarini slums in Kisauni and knocked on Suhaila’s door and picked her up. She left behind her three-year-old baby and petrified neighbours.
It was unclear whether her current husband was at home.Reports indicate Suhaila ended her marriage to Mahir immediately he vanished from Majengo.
She is a small scale trader in Bakarini whose academic record is not known and rival accounts suggest she was born in Kwale or Kisauni. After the suicide bomber fled Majengo she left her matrimonial home to live with her parents in Bakarani, Kisauni where she, allegedly, entered a new relationship.
Reports indicate she kept a low profile and went to great lengths to erase his ties to Mahir’s family but now investigators wish to find out whether any contacts with Mahir continued in private or whether the deceased offered any material support to her from hiding.