Court finds two suspects in Dusit terror attack have case to answer

A court in Nairobi on Tuesday found two suspects accused of facilitatig the 2019 DusitD2 complex terror attack on 14 Riverside, Nairobi, to have a case to answer.

High Court judge Diana Kavedza ruled that the State had sufficiently proven its case against Hussein Abdile Ali and Mohamed Abdi Ali, requiring them to explain why they should not be jailed for their links to terrorism.

However, she clarified that while she had found they had a case to answer, this did not imply their guilt.

The judge believed that, ultimately, the scales of justice could tilt in their favour if they presented evidence to rebut the case put forward by witnesses and the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The judge also noted that Mile Abdullahi, the third person in the case, had admitted to the charges and entered into a plea bargain with the State.

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

Prosecution counsel, Duncan Ondimu, told the court that investigators from the Anti-Terror Police Unit had combed through Facebook, 177 SIM cards collected from Muchatha, Kiambu County, M-Pesa transactions, calls, and texts to uncover the identities, movements, and communications behind the attack.

From this data, he said, they linked the Dusit D2 attack planners and facilitators to a foiled attempt to bomb the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) in 2018.

Police constable Titus Lang’at was credited with piecing the evidence together, which led to the arrest of Abdullahi, Mohamed, and Ali.

In his testimony, Lang’at told Justice Mochache that the 177 SIM cards were collected from Muchatha in Kiambu County, and a mobile phone from Ali Salim Gichunge helped investigators trace the attack back to Jilib, Somalia.

Jilib, the court heard, is an operations base for al-Shabaab.

“If we are to stop this menace, we must also address the facilitators and financiers,” Lang’at stated.

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

Lang’at also testified that Gichunge had used a lost identification card to register for M-Pesa.

He also used the ID of Dr Eric Kinyanjui to register Kemunto’s line.

Kemunto was last traced to Mandera and is believed to have crossed into Somalia after the attack.

The court heard that a Facebook account was created on January 14, 2019 a day before the attack, with the purpose of transmitting live videos of the attackers.

Another account, created on April 4, 2018, was traced to Adam Chege, who was in Jilib.

Adam Chege was central to the attack. It was alleged that the same Facebook account was used to communicate the KICC bombing plot, for which Victor Odede was charged with attempting to blow up the building.

Hussein, the second accused, was said to have possessed pictures of fake student IDs that helped two terrorists escape a refugee camp for Muchatha.

The court heard that Hussein communicated with Chege through Facebook, though he did not mention anything about an intended terrorist attack.

Lang’at testified that the ID images were sent by Chege, who had instructed Hussein on what to look 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 Abdulahi Ali.

The officer stated that the same mobile phone number found on the parcel was later found with Mohamed.