Kenyan court jails Westgate terror attack accomplices

01 Novembre 2020

Nairobi, Kenya, November 1 (Infosplusgabon) – A Kenyan Court has sentenced two men, convicted of the Westgate terror attack of September 2013, to 33 years and 18 years in jail for their roles in the killing of 67 people, Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi of the Milimani Court in Nairobi said on Friday.

Mohammed Abdi was convicted to 33 years in jail, but the trial magistrate ordered the seven years spent during the detention to be deducted from the sentence, leaving the convict to serve 26 years in jail.

The co-convict, Hussein Mustafa, was sentenced to 18 years in jail out of which, the seven years served in jail would be deducted from his time in jail. Mustafa will now serve 11 years for the charge of conspiracy to commit terrorism.

The Court convicted the two after a seven-year-long trial.

On Saturday, 21 September, 2013, masked gunmen stormed the upscale shopping mall in the Kenyan capital, shooting shoppers, including school children who were conducting a cooking experiment at the mall.

The terror siege on the mall lasted several hours as the security forces battled to rescue scores of people who were on a Saturday midday shopping spree at the mall.

Part of the mall caved in during the operation and it was thought the Kenyan security forces may have used controlled explosives during the long siege on the mall to deal with the armed attackers.

The masterminds behind the terror attack at the heart of the Kenyan society were never traced and arrested.

Abdi was convicted on a charge of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and sentenced to 18 years for the offence and another 15 years for offering assistance to the terrorists who carried out the attack.

The two who were tried for the offence were also found to have in their possession, literature seen to promote the ideology of terror group, the Al Shabaab.

The magistrate noted that the two convicts were not the principal suspects to the terrorist attack.

They have 14 days to appeal the sentence at the High Court of Kenya, the magistrate said.

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