Al Shabaab member gets 59-year jail sentence

By Lucianne Limo

A Kenyan court has jailed for 59 years a man who admitted to being a member of Al Shabaab terror group.

Nairobi Chief Magistrate Lucy Nyambura on Thursday convicted Abdimajid Yasin Mohamed alias Hussein after he pleaded guilty to nine out of 10 counts.

The suspect had appeared in court last week and was charged alongside Abdi Adan alias Salman Abdi who denied the charges.

The magistrate ordered Mohammed to undergo psychiatric examination last week and doctors found him fit to stand trial.

When he appeared in court on Thursday, he maintained his plea of guilty and was jailed by the magistrate.

In mitigation, Mohammed asked to be jailed in Somalia so that he can be close to his wife and two children.

The two suspects arrested in Eastleigh with bombs, grenades and a cache of weapons that included six suicide bombs, 12 grenades, four AK 47 rifles and 480 bullets recovered from them as police thwarted a major terror plot in Nairobi.

The two terror suspects were arrested from a residential house last Thursday night in Eastleigh area where they had been staying in the past two months while plotting the alleged attack on churches.

Police said they were part of a larger terror gang that planned to attack strategic buildings in the city. Two other suspects are at large and police have been looking for them.  The suspects apparently planned to use arsenals to attack  churches.

The suicide bombs had been mounted on vests attached with mobile phones with batteries, which police said would have ignited a major explosions.

Detectives from Special Crimes Prevention Unit and Flying Squad said they stumbled on the weapons as they pursued information that the four suspects of Somali origin had brought in the four rifles.