Fresh details on female terrorists who attacked Mombasa police station

One of the three women terrorists killed during an attack on a police station in Mombasa on Sunday was due to join university.

This emerged as the identities of the women who launched the assault on Central Police Station in Mombasa were revealed amid fresh reports that they were partly motivated to avenge the February 2, 2014, raid on Musa Mosque in the town.

They were killed by police officers in the botched raid after injuring two officers and starting a fire at the entrance of the police station.

Reports now indicate that the three women, Ramla Abdulrahman Hussein, Maimuna Abdulrahman Hussein and Tasnim Yakub Abdullahi Farah, had a death wish and harboured a burning hatred for the Kenyan state.

Their criminal actions were purportedly inspired by the storming by security forces of Musa Mosque in Majengo where two of them lived and studied, and where six worshippers and a policeman were killed.

A local man, Hemed Salim Hemed, who was arrested in the February 2 raid, has been missing since but it is unclear whether the women had any ties to the mosque.

Ramla, according to new reports, was set to join a university in Mombasa this year.

Initially, Maimuna had been wrongfully identified as Fatma Omar, one of the aliases she used in Internet communications locally and abroad. Fresh information now shows that Ramla sat her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams at Qubaa Secondary School in Majengo, where Tasmin also completed school the same year.

Maimuna studied at Qubaa and sat her exams in 2013 according to a Government report that does not state what grade she scored or what she did after high school.

"Ramla Abdulrahman Hussein studied at Iqra Academy and Qubaa Secondary School and completed [in] 2015. She, currently, wanted to join TUM university (sic)," says the report that also says Maimuna Abdulrahman Hussein also "studied at Iqra Academy before joining Abdallah Farsy Secondary School and completed in 2013."

Mombasa's most militant preachers, including the late Sheikh Aboud Rogo, Sheikh Ibrahim Amur and activist Sheikh Abubakar Sharif alias Makaburi, either preached or worshipped at Musa Mosque.

Most of the militants fighting the Kenyan military in Lamu have been traced to this mosque.

SITE, an organisation that monitors jihadist activity, now claims in a message posted on September 12 that before they raided the police station, the women pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and its leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and wished to die in the cause of jihad or holy war against the Kenyan state.

A Twitter message retrieved by SITE on September 12 alleges they posted a handwritten message in English bidding their families farewell and justifying why they had to strike.

"We pledge allegiance to the caliph of the Muslims, the Amir of the believers Abi Bakr al Baghdadi Al Hussayni Al Qurayshi..., " says the purported message by the three women, which also declared that "by God's will" the whole world would come under the rule of Islamic law.

The alleged message, which The Standard could not independently confirm, also quotes the women swearing at the Kenyan state and accusing it and its security system of oppressing Muslims.

We have established that Ramla and Maimuna declined to take any photographs or erased those they had in family albums after high school. They also died before acquiring Kenyan identity cards although they were Kenyan.

Security officers have now spread their investigation to primary and secondary schools where the three women studied.