State: Jihadi brides have links with ISIS

From left: Halima Aden Ali, Maryam Said, Khadija Abubakar and Ummul Khayar at the Mombasa Court yesterday, where they pleaded not guilty to charges of joining Al Shabaab. [Photo: Kelvin Karani/standard]

Investigators now claim three Kenyan women and a Zanzibari accused of joining Somalia's Al Shabaab also have links with militant groups in Sudan and Syria.

"The accused have links to Syria and Sudan. If any is to reach Syria, it will be hard to get them even through our police or diplomatic relations because it is a state that operates under life support," said state lawyer Eugene Wangila referring to parts of Syria controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Wednesday, the alleged scope of Kenyan women's involvement with extremist groups in the Horn of Africa and Middle East was partially exposed when prosecutors unveiled Halima Adan Ali, a Kenyan woman arrested in Machakos on April 3, who they claim recruited two other Kenyan women, namely Maryam Said Aboud and Khadija Abdulkadir Abubakar, as well as a medical student Ummul Khayr Sadir Abdalla of Zanzibar.

Maryam completed Kenyatta University in 2013 with a bachelor's degree in Commerce and was employed in a hospital in Malindi until she vanished suddenly in mid-March this year. Until then, Khadija was studying Pharmacy at Mount Kenya University in Thika, when she suddenly disappeared from school and her family without trace.

Last evening, defence lawyers were to respond to prosecution objections to bail pending the start of the trial. Halima, who has been in police custody under interrogation for close to a month, was hauled to a packed court in Mombasa and pleaded not guilty to the charge of belonging to Al-Shabaab as bewildered relatives wept and watched in pitch silence.

Halima's bio data is not available but last month, anti-terrorism police told a court in Mombasa that she has been under surveillance for some time over alleged links to terrorism. Reports indicate she is a native of Wajir, who has lived in Nairobi but police say she was arrested in Machakos and transported to Mombasa; where she has been held since early April.

Cover faces

Wednesday, all the four suspects wore matching full flowing black Muslim clothes with face veils. They tried to cover their faces from prying cameras, prompting the magistrate to order them to show their faces. They have been held in separate stations in Mombasa since March 27 when Khadija, Maryam and Abdalla were arrested in El Wak town while allegedly trying to enter Somalia to meet a contact identified by police as Abdulla Zubeir.

Khadija, Maryam and Ummul Khayr were first brought to court in April as police in a separate court applied to hold Hamila for a month. They were charged together Wednesday in a twist of events that left many of their relatives weeping.

Detectives allege that Khadija, Maryam and the Zanzibari were recruited through a chatroom on the Internet and Wednesday's claims by a State lawyer linking them to Sudanese and Syrian extremists tends to confirm police reports released after the March 27 arrests in El Wak.

Police reports in March and last month claimed Ummul Khayr, Maryam and Khadija joined Al Shabaab met last year in September on an Internet platform managed by a Kenyan fugitive in Somalia. They were lured to join Jihad in the war-torn nation by a Syrian female contact with the promise of marrying Islamic fighters in Somalia and eventually ending up as widows of Islamic holy fighters in Syria, where they hoped to reach through Turkey after flying from Mogadishu.

A government report suggested that Umul Khayr was the mastermind of the alleged recruitment but now detectives claim to have uncovered information that Halima, might be the one who roped the three women to the alleged terrorist conspiracy.

Wangila told Mombasa Senior Principal Magistrate Richard Odenyo that State had proof that the two women belong to Al Shabaab.

Wangila opposed their release on bail, saying they belonged to an international network that could easily spirit them out of the court's jurisdiction or Kenya if set free. He argued that they could still be held but accorded a fast trial.

But defence lawyers Hamisi Mwadzogo and Chacha Mwita dismissed the State lawyer's claims and declared their clients have a constitutional right to be freed.