• On April 2, 2015, gunmen stormed Garissa University College killing 144 students, two military officers and two police officers.
• Five people were initially arrested, two were acquitted and three found guilty.
Image: REUTERS
Three suspects in the Garisssa University terror attack in which 148 people were killed have been found guilty.
Mohammed Abdikadir, Hassan Aden Hassan and Rashid Charles Mberesero will be sentenced on July 3.
The fourth suspect Sahar Diriye Hussein was acquitted of all charges after the judge found no link between him and the other accused.
Diriye was arrested in a Mandera bound bus while traveling from Garissa in the company of Abdikadir.
Abdikadir and Hassan were convicted after SIM cards recovered from them were found to have been used to contact one of the attackers who was killed during the incident.
Hassan was handed over to the police by the military in Mandera after bus tickets dated March 27, 2015, from Mandera to Garissa and another dated March 29 from Garissa back to Mandera were found.
Mberesero, who was said to be Tanzanian (not proven), reportedly commanded the attack. In his ruling yesterday, chief magistrate Francis Andayi said he was the informer from the college.
Witnesses who testified said he was a devout Muslim who understood the Quran very well and attended morning prayers at the mosque everyday.
On the day of the attack, however, the sheikh said Mberesero went to the mosque with his bag and left in a rush before prayers were over.
“He left at around 5am leaving behind his bag in the mosque and never returned until police came for it three days later,” the sheikh told court.
In his bag, a book where he had left a whole page farewell message was recovered among other things. In the message addressed to ‘a brother’ Yasin, Mberesero professed his readiness to be a Jihadi, noting that he was already a commander.
“Yasin, I’m deeply thinking of going to school but there’s still a thin [sic] way. I want to join Jihad. Are the rewards in this world better than those after death? I think those in death are far better,” he wrote in Swahili.
“We have to be patient; I change every time depending on environment. The only Haram [wrong] that I do is for Allah.”
Mberesero was arrested in one of the cubicles in the hostel while hiding under the bed. The officers said they found him dressed only in a boxer after they asked all students to leave the premise.
“When asked to identify himself, he said he was a student, but he could not say which course he was taking,” said an officer in his testimony.
The police said he later changed and said he was visiting a friend in school but he could not identify the host by name.
Another suspect, Osman Abdi Dagane, a security guard at the university who was found taking pictures at the scene, had been acquitted earlier as there was no evidence against him.
The ruling which began with a testimony of a survivor renewed the memories of gory images of how half of the students in the institution met their gruesome death in 2015.
Everline was a member of the Christian Union and they had woken up early for morning devotion as was the norm.
She joined the other members in one of the halls but at around 5am, there was a bang on the door when the attackers stormed in, spraying them with bullets.
“In confusion, we screamed while some of us continued to pray. The attacker continued shooting indiscriminately,” she told court.
“I was shot on the arm and I fell down. My face and clothes were covered in blood. Everyone went down”.
Everline said she heard one attacker tell the other to shoot everyone again to confirm that they were dead. She lay still as the gunshots burst in her ears, splashing blood on her face.
“When everything went quiet, I opened my eyes to see if they had left. I saw the body of a girl who was standing next to me at the devotion service. One of her legs pressed on me and her tongue stuck out,” she recounted.
In the meantime, Everline said her phone and one of her schoolmate's kept ringing. She tried to reach to call out for help, but she could not stand up.
“That is when I realised that I had been shot on the leg. I lay there, watching the bodies scattered on the floor. I could see my phone, it was covered in blood,” she testified.
She said members of the Kenya Red Cross Society came to her rescue later on and she was rushed to Garissa Hospital.
“The two accused were in constant communication with the terrorist. I, therefore, find the first, second and fifth accused were members of al Shabaab. They conspired to carry out the attack and finally carried it out,” Andayi said.
The magistrate ruled that the third accused was in company of first accused when he was arrested.
On April 2, 2015, gunmen stormed Garissa Univerisy College killing 144 students, two military officers and two police officers. They injured more than 79.
Al Shabaab, which the gunmen claimed to be part of, took responsibility for the attack. The siege ended the same day, when four of the attackers were killed. Five men were later arrested in connection with the attack
Parents of the butchered students want compensation from the government.