Court finds two guilty of aiding 2019 DusitD2 terror attack that killed 21
While convicting Hussein Mohamed Abdille Ali and Mohamed Abdi Ali, Justice Kavedza said there was evidence that there was facilitation of the attack.
Two men who were linked to the DusitD2 terror attack that claimed 21 lives and injured several people in 2019 have been found guilty of facilitating a terrorist attack.
Kahawa Law Court Judge Diana Kavedza, while delivering her judgment, noted that the attack affected Kenyans' sovereignty and dignity.
She said Kenyans remember the pain and the loss of their loved ones, and in the judgment, she sought to speak to survivors of the attack.
While convicting Hussein Mohamed Abdille Ali and Mohamed Abdi Ali, Justice Kavedza said there was evidence that there was facilitation of the attack.
"Having considered the evidence before me, I hereby find the two accused guilty of facilitating the planners and attackers of the DusitD2 terror attack.
The court noted that despite Abdille Ali being a Standard 8 pupil then, he had more knowledge than his age on the use and registration of IDs.
Kavedza further found that the IDs used by the first accused were linked to the terrorist attack.
While convicting Mohamed Abdi, the second accused, the court also found that he used a SIM card that was used to send money to facilitate terrorism.
She added that the evidence was corroborated by the witnesses on transactions of Sh836,000 made from his registered number to the lead attacker.
The court also said the attackers stayed at Abdi's house before the attack.
Mohamed Abdi was also convicted of forgery.
The court also noted that one suspect in the case had pleaded guilty to four counts after accepting a plea agreement with the prosecution. He was convicted by the court in January.
He admitted to providing internet services to the DusitD2 planners and attackers, uttering a fake identification card and false presentation to get a passport.
In April, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) urged the court to convict and sentence the two.
Abdille Ali and Mohamed Abdi Ali were jointly charged with conspiracy to commit an offence contrary to the law.
Abdille Ali also faced an extra charge of facilitating a terrorist act, while Abdi Ali faces 14 counts of the same offence.
The charges stem from the heinous terrorist attack on the DusitD2 Hotel Complex on January 15, 2019, where four armed assailants and a suicide bomber claimed the lives of 21 innocent people and left several others with life-threatening injuries.
During the trial, the prosecution presented evidence through 45 witnesses, and on January 21, 2025, the court ruled that the accused had a case to answer.
Mohamed Abdi was accused of sending more than Sh800,000 to phone numbers linked to the attack mastermind, Ali Salim Gichunge.
The police said the money was moved in tranches on different days to several numbers that Gichunge owned. The money, the police say, was critical in planning and executing the attack.
From the evidence tabled in court, one of the mobile phone numbers used to wire the money was registered in the name of Ali's deceased brother, Isaack Abdi.
The court heard that Abdille communicated with Adam Chege, who was in Somalia, through Facebook, though he did not mention anything about an intended terrorist attack.
Titus Lang'at, a police constable, testified that ID images were sent by Chege, who had instructed Abdille on what to look out for.
According to the officer, Chege also communicated with someone named 'Simple Wes' through the same Facebook account, who was to transport a parcel from Mandera to Nairobi.
The parcel was to be collected by Abdille, and the police said it had the IDs that were to be used by the attackers.
In his testimony, Lang'at told Justice Mochache that from his analysis of the data from 177 SIM cards collected from Muchatha and a mobile phone recovered from Gichunge, the attack was traced back to Jilib in Somalia.
Jilib, the court heard, is the headquarters and operations base for Al-Shabaab terror group.
In defence, the convicts denied the allegations and said they were neither at the scene of the crime. The first accused maintained he was a minor at the time he was charged. He said he was 14 years.
The case will come for mitigation on June 19, 2025.
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