Court issues arrest warrant for Dusit attack suspect

The Kahawa Law Court has issued a warrant of arrest against Mohamed Abdi Ali after he failed to show up for the defence hearing of suspects accused of facilitating the Dusit terror attack on January 15 and 16, 2019.

Ali was charged alongside Mire Abdullahi and Hussein Mohamed Abdille.

Abdullahi admitted to the charges the state had intended to prefer against him and entered into a plea bargain.

He admitted to providing internet services to the Dusit D2 planners and attackers, uttering a fake identification card and false presentation to get a passport.

Ali and Abdille denied their charges and were found with a case to answer by Justice Diana Mochache on January 21, 2025.

The two were then put on their defence.

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The defence hearing was supposed to take place on Wednesday, February 5, and Thursday, February 6 respectively but did not kick off due to Ali’s unavailability.

“Whereas Mohamed Abdi Ali has failed to appear before this court as required for the hearing of this case. Therefore, you are hereby commanded forthwith to apprehend the said Mohamed Abdi Ali and bring him before this court,” reads the warrant signed by the judge.

Justice Mochache found that the State had sufficiently proven its case against Abdile and Ali, requiring them to explain why they should not be jailed for their links to terrorism.

She, however, clarified that finding them with a case to answer does not imply their guilt.

She said that the scales of justice could tilt in their favour if they successfully rebut the case put forward by witnesses and the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The State called 45 witnesses in its case against the trio.

Ali is accused of sending more than Sh800,000 to phone numbers linked to the attack mastermind, Ali Salim Gichunge.

The police said the money was moved in tranches on different days to several numbers that Gichunge owned.

The money, the police say, was critical in planning and executing the attack.

From the evidence tabled in court, one of the mobile phone numbers used to wire the money was registered in the name of Ali’s deceased brother, Isaack Abdi.

The court heard that Abdille communicated with Adam Chege, who was in Somalia, through Facebook, though he did not mention anything about an intended terrorist attack.

Titus Lang’at, a police constable, testified that ID images were sent by Chege, who had instructed Abdille on what to look out for.

According to the officer, Chege also communicated with someone named ‘Simple Wes’ through the same Facebook account, who was to transport a parcel from Mandera to Nairobi.

The parcel was to be collected by Abdille and the police said it had the IDs that were to be used by the attackers.

Lang’at stated that the same mobile phone number found on the parcel was later linked to Abdille.

The court heard that investigators from the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) combed through Facebook, 177 SIM cards collected from Muchatha, Kiambu and M-Pesa transactions.

More analysis was done on calls and texts to uncover the identities, movements, and communications behind the attack.

Prosecution counsel Duncan Ondimu said the data linked the Dusit D2 attack planners and facilitators to a foiled attempt to bomb the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) in 2018.

Lang’at was credited with putting together evidence that led to the arrest of Abdullahi, Abdille and Ali.

In his testimony, Lang’at told Justice Mochache that from his analysis the data from 177 SIM cards collected from Muchatha, and a mobile phone recovered from Gichunge traced the attack back to Jilib in Somalia.

Jilib, the court heard, is the headquarters and operations base for the Al-Shabaab terror group.

The judge also heard that Gichunge had used a lost identification card belonging to Dr Eric Kinyanjui to register his wife Violet Kemunto’s line.

Police said they last traced Kemunto to Mandera and that she then crossed over to Somalia after the attack and is based in Jilib.

Facebook accounts analysis by the ATPU through the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) showed that an account was created on January 14, 2019, a day before the attack, to transmit live videos of the attackers.

Another account, created on April 4, 2018, was traced to Chege, who was in Jilib and was central to the attack.

Police believe that the same Facebook account was used to communicate and plan the thwarted Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) bombing plot.

Victor Odede was charged with attempting to blow up KICC after it was discovered he had been directed to collect intelligence on the security set-up at the building.

Police also accused him of making several trips to Moyale using a motorcycle and a bus to take notes and information on the kind of security checks the police were carrying out and communicating to his Jilib handler.