Kenya, like Israel, dismisses report of foiled plot to assassinate Netanyahu

Kenyan officials joined their Israeli counterparts Thursday in dismissing a report in a Kuwaiti daily that claimed Kenyan security authorities foiled an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his trip to Kenya earlier this week.

“An attempted assassination can’t be secret. It has to be something visible, and to my knowledge there was absolutely nothing of the sort,” Kenya’s Interior Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka told The Associated Press.

“I’m not aware, and there was no such thing at all. Those are lies,” added Kenya’s Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet.

In Jerusalem, the Prime Minister’s office earlier dismissed the report as “absolute nonsense.”

The Kuwaiti paper, Al-Jarida, quoted an anonymous, ostensibly well-placed source saying that the Kenyan authorities ordered a change in the route taken by Netanyahu and his delegation from Nairobi airport to their hotel on Tuesday. An explosive device was found on the original route, and two were suspects arrested, the report said, adding that the Kenyan authorities had placed a gag order on further details of the alleged incident.

Asked about the story while in Ethiopia on Thursday, Netanyahu answered: “The answer is we know nothing about it because there is nothing in it.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the claim that the motorcade changed its route because of an explosives threat was “simply not true.”

Netanyahu visited Kenya on Tuesday on the second stop of a four-nation African trip that also took him to Uganda, Rwanda and, on Thursday, Ethiopia.