Kenyan court sentences two men to 30 years in prison for aiding 2019 hotel attack
Al Shabaab regularly carries out attacks in Kenya to try to pressure the government to withdraw peacekeeping troops from Somalia, where al Shabaab is waging an insurgency to try to seize power.
Prosecutors said Abdile and Ali helped two attackers obtain forged identity cards that allowed them to escape from a refugee camp and provided financial support.
Abdile and Ali have 14 days to appeal their sentences.
Delivering her ruling on Thursday, judge Diana Mochache said without their involvement, the attack may not have happened.
'Without financiers, facilitators and sympathisers, terrorists cannot actualise their activities,' Mochache said.
In the January 2019 attack, gunmen stormed the Dusit complex in Nairobi, triggering an assault and siege that lasted more than 12 hours.
The Kenyan government said at the time it had killed all the attackers.
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Al Shabaab regularly carries out attacks in Kenya to try to pressure the government to withdraw peacekeeping troops from Somalia, where al Shabaab is waging an insurgency to try to seize power. Prosecutors said Abdile and Ali helped two attackers obtain forged identity cards that allowed them to escape from a refugee camp and provided financial support. Abdile and Ali have 14 days to appeal their sentences. Delivering her ruling on Thursday, judge Diana Mochache said without their involvement, the attack may not have happened. 'Without financiers, facilitators and sympathisers, terrorists cannot actualise their activities,' Mochache said. In the January 2019 attack, gunmen stormed the Dusit complex in Nairobi, triggering an assault and siege that lasted more than 12 hours. The Kenyan government said at the time it had killed all the attackers.
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A Kenyan court on Thursday sentenced two men to 30 years in prison on terrorism charges for their role in a deadly attack on a luxury hotel in the capital in 2019. The attack on the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in central Nairobi left 21 people dead, with police rescuing some 700 civilians as events unfolded over the 20-hour siege. Five gunmen with the Al-Qaeda-linked Somali militant group Al-Shabaab stormed the complex on the afternoon of January 15, 2019 with one detonating a suicide bomb outside and four others shot dead by police. A court last month found two Kenyan citizens, Hussein Mohamed Abdille Ali, 22, and Mohamed Abdi Ali, 61, guilty of conspiracy to commit and facilitating terrorism for their role in preparing the attack. Sentencing them at a Nairobi courthouse on Thursday, judge Diana Kavedza said: "The convicts may not have physically wielded the weapons that caused harm to the victims, but their facilitation directly enabled attackers who were heavily armed with guns, grenades, and suicide vests." "This was not a crime with isolated harm, 21 lives were lost," she added, acknowledging statements from survivors about their ongoing psychological struggles. "The emotional scars of the attack runs deep," she said. Al-Shabaab has carried out multiple attacks in Kenya in part because of its decision to send troops into Somalia in 2011 to fight the group. An assault on the high-end Westgate mall in Nairobi in 2013 left 67 dead in a siege that stretched out over four days.
