A Kenyan court on Wednesday convicted three people of terrorism-related charges for helping militants to carry out a university attack that killed 148 people, reported BBC.
Hassan Edin Hassan, Mohamed Ali Abikar, and Rashid Charles Mberesero were found guilty of conspiracy to commit the attack.
Judge Francis Andayi said the three men found guilty “were members of the al-Shabaab terrorist group whose members carried out the attack. He said the prosecutors had proven “beyond reasonable doubt” that the three men “knew the plot” but did not provide further details of the alleged conspiracy.
Andayi ordered the three defendants, two Kenyans and a Tanzanian national, to be remanded in custody until July 3 when they will be sentenced. These are the first convictions of the attack. A fourth person, Sahal Diriye Hussein, was acquitted of all charges for lack of evidence.
Defense counsel Mbugua Mureithi said he will appeal. Details about how the three assisted the militants currently remain unavailable.
In 2015, the militants from the Al Shabaab terrorist group, a group affiliated to al-Qaeda, stormed Garissa University and opened fire indiscriminately, before freeing some Muslim students and then killing others identified as Christians. All four gunmen were later killed by security forces. Mohamed Mohamud, the operation’s suspected mastermind, was killed in southwestern Somalia in 2016. Al-Shabab said he had been killed by “US crusaders”.
It was the second-bloodiest attack in Kenya’s history, surpassed only by al-Qaeda’s bombing of the United States embassy in Nairobi in 1998 that killed more than 200 people.
Al-Shabab has carried out many attacks inside Kenya since 2011. The group attacked the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in Nairobi in January. In the attack, 21 people were killed and 28 were wounded.
