How an online exchange tied suspect to Dusit hotel attack

Abdille Ali, one of the suspects in the2019 DusitD2 complex attack in court during the hearing of the case. [File, Standard] One of the DusitD2 terror attack suspects, Hussein Mohamed Abdille, Thursday, told the court how his primary school headteacher lured him into being arrested by the police. Abdille stated that at the time of his arrest in January 2019, he was a high school student at a day school in Mandera, and the teacher reached out to inquire about his educational journey. "He called me and said that there was something he needed us to talk about and that I should meet him at Jamia Mosque," said Abdille. He was testifying in his defence hearing, where he was charged alongside Mohamed Abdi Ali and Mire Abdullahi for facilitating the attack on 15 January 2019. He said that when he arrived at the mosque, the teacher told him that he just wanted to understand why he had opted to join a day school as opposed to a boarding school for his secondary education. The teacher then informed Abdille that police officers were looking for him and needed to ask some questions about a phone number he was using. "We went to the Mandera Polytechnic to meet the police officers, who wanted to know about my phone," he testified. Abdille told Justice Diana Mochache that they met men in a Toyota Probox, and one of them alighted and asked him to hand over the phone before they bundled him into the vehicle. "I was then taken to the police station." The 21-year-old stated that he had paid Sh1,500 for a phone, an Infinix model, from a friend. Abdille told the judge that he did not know the call records from the phone he was using. When asked about a line in his other phone, he said that it was a gift. According to the suspect, he was friends on Facebook with a man called Adamu Chege, using an account that he told the judge he could not remember. He had a second account under the name Prince H. Ahmed, where the two continued to communicate. He told Justice Mochache that he used his Madrassa mate's phone number to open the account, adding that he had another phone number given to him by his mother. It was shown in court that in April 2018, Abdille, through his second Facebook account, Prince H. Ahmed, received a friend request from Adamu Chege. During cross-examination by Dancun Ondimu, he said that he never knew Chege personally and only chatted with him on Facebook. From their conversation, Abdille stated that Chege told him he was a student at Arabia Secondary School and had lost his student identification card. He sought his help in producing an ID, claiming that he would be expelled from school if his teachers discovered that he did not have one. "I told him I was a primary school student and did not have an ID," he told the court. He said that Chege instructed him to find someone who could create replicas. Abdille then approached a neighbour, Ahmed Adan, who was a high school student. The student allegedly provided him with a fake high school ID from Barwaqo Secondary School and a fake birth certificate to facilitate the process. He then shared them with Chege. In his further testimony, Abdille said that the neighbour had procured a fake ID to avoid arrest by the police. Chege subsequently created an ID using the photo of Siyat Omar, an attacker killed at Dusit, with the name Abdi Fatah Yusuf Adan. Abdille further admitted to sending Chege an ID, a birth certificate, and more information on how to modify the ID that Chege had created. Asked by his lawyer, Margaret Ngesa, to elaborate on how he obtained a phone number from Chege, he stated that while chatting on Facebook, Chege expressed his intention to call him. He maintained that before his arrest, he did not know any of his co-accused.

How an online exchange tied suspect to Dusit hotel attack

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