Restaurant’s £630,000 eviction claim

A Somali Muslim restaurant in Nairobi is seeking 88 million shillings (£630,000) in compensation from the Kenyan Catholic Church, for its alleged eviction from a church building in the capital, writes Fredrick Nzwili.

The Al-Yusra Restaurant owners want the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Knight Frank Kenya, a property management firm, to pay the money for lost profits and refurbishment costs of the commercial space in Waumini House, the seat of the bishops’ conference.

The bishops say the conference decided against leasing the space to any restaurant for security reasons. “We had to say no to any restaurant because it could pose a security risk. We were looking at what is happening now in the whole country,” Bishop Martin Kivuva of Machakos told The Tablet. The bishops are challenging the 88m shillings figure.

In September last year, presumed Somali terrorists attacked Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall in an assault that resulted in the deaths of at least 67 people.