The untold story of Kenya's deadliest terror plot

When terror suspects Abdi Majid Yasin, Musharaf Abdalla Maalim and Omar Abdi Adan appeared before Milimani Court on July 28, 2017. [File, Standard]

Omar Abdi Adan, Musharaf Abdalla and Yassin Mohammed are behind bars today.

They are, however, battling before the High Court with the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for their freedom.

On one hand, the trio assert their innocence. On the other, DPP Renson Ingonga argues that the magistrate’s court was right to find them guilty and subsequently ordered their imprisonment.

The back story of how the trio ended up in Kenya’s criminal justice system is twofold. The three convicts paint a picture of wrongful conviction and excessive sentence.

Meanwhile, Senior Principal Prosecution Counsel Duncan Ondimu’s story on behalf of the State is rather a terrifying one to the ears. But perhaps, a success for the agencies dealing with crime in the country.

On the night of September 14, 2012, police arrested two men in Eastleigh, Nairobi County, and recovered some explosives, guns, and ammunition.

The explosives, weighing approximately 18 kilograms, could kill more than 500 people, and they also recovered 12 hand grenades, 16 magazines, and 421 rounds of ammunition.

Disarm explosives

The present Deputy Inspector General Kenya Police, Eliud Lagat, was the star witness in the case. At the time, he was a superintendent. The officer told the court that he disarmed the explosives. According to him, more than 500 people could have been killed if the plot could have succeeded.

By his estimation, then, this could have been the deadliest attack in Kenya. The 1998 bomb blast cost at least 212 lives, while in the 2013 Westgate and Garissa University attacks, 67 and 142 people lost their lives, respectively.

In his testimony, he said that he saw two explosives in two bags, and he cut wires connected to two Nokia phones. Another bag, he said, had four AK47 rifles and ammunition. There were two other bags with different types of explosives hooked to a grenade.

From his examination, he said, four IEDs were suicide explosives vests. At the time, the prosecution was being represented by senior prosecutor Vincent Monda.

According to Lagat, the jackets had three slabs on each with a mixture of explosives, namely TNT, RDX, and PETN.

Ball bearings

He said the three are components of high explosives. The witness further testified that RDX is a primary explosive and that TNT and PETN can travel at the speed of 8.5 meters per second.

He said that each slab was glued with several ball bearings, which enhanced fragmentation effects during an explosion since it could fly in all directions.

Lagat testified that each vest had more than 2,300 ball bearings.

He said the vest maker did not want to leave any chance because one vest was enough to cause maximum damage.

The other two IEDs, the court heard, were hooked to a grenade that had a slab of ball bearings glued to them. The officer said it looked like a pineapple. Of the 12 grenades, he explained, six were F1 Russian Grenades, which look like pineapples, and the other six were Chinese 82-2 grenades, which were smooth.

According to him, the explosives could be controlled remotely or could have been used by a suicide bomber.

He stated that rocker switches on the explosives were to be used by the suicide bomber, and in the event they failed, then the Nokia phones could be used to trigger them.

“If a target was a crowd, we were looking into deaths of more than 500,” Lagat testified.

Abdi is also known as an alias Salman Abdi. At the same time, Musharaf is known as Shukri, or Sharrif Abdallah Maulim, or Alex Shikanda or Rashid Swaitan. He is also known as Ali or Bonir or Blacky.

In the court documents, Yassin is also known as Ali Hussein or Browny.

Yassin and Abdi were arrested in Eastleigh, while Abdalla was arrested 15 days later in Malindi. Police said that Abdalla had fled to Malindi.

Abdi and Yassin faced 10 charges, and the latter pleaded guilty to nine, except for being in the country illegally.

Police claimed that when they discovered the explosives, everybody ran out, but Yassin was laughing, saying that there was nothing to fear as they had disconnected their devices.

After Abdalla’s arrest, the charge sheet was amended, and together with Abdi, he was charged with two counts of having explosives weighing 18 kilos.

They were charged with two counts of having ammunition and four counts of having a firearm without a license.

The two men were also accused of being in the country illegally.

In addition, Abdi was also charged with two counts of giving false information to a police officer and a Registrations Bureau official to get a police abstract for a lost ID. The prosecution argued he did not have one.

In court, police said that Abdalla identified himself as Bonny Ali to a supervisor at the hotel where he was arrested and did not have an identity card. The court heard that he paid Sh400 for the room.

The supervisor testified that police officers came looking for Ali Abdallah, but he informed them that he only knew of Bonny Abdallah. The prosecution argued that Bonny Abdallah and Ali Abdallah were one and the same person.

According to police, Abdalla frequently visited the Eastleigh house and a guard testified that he introduced himself as Shikanda.

The police further claimed that he paid Sh120,000 in rent at different places where he used five names and left behind rent deposits amounting to Sh41,000.

According to them, whenever he left any of the rented houses, he would tell the landlord that he was traveling to either France or Canada.

They said that his story was that his parents lived in Busia County. The lead investigator in the case told police that he was Kenyan but had not applied for his ID.

The State’s sixth witness worked as a shop attendant in Eastleigh, and she said that Abdalla had introduced himself as Ali.

On August 10, 2012, she said that he went to her shop with another man and purchased items worth Sh68,500.

According to her, the money was deposited in her Post Bank account.

When terror suspects Abdi Majid Yasin, Musharaf Abdalla Maalim and Omar Abdi Adan appeared before Milimani Court on July 28, 2017. [File, Standard]

Abdalla allegedly visited her several times and became friends but she turned down his advances.

On September 15, 2012, the court heard he took her to his landlady and asked that she be given the rent deposit since he was in a hurry to go to France. Abdalla said she helped him in the cereals business he runs in Eastleigh.

Mr Moneybags

A real estate agent testified that Abdalla rented one of their properties for Sh41,000 before moving to a different house under the same company, where he paid Sh12,000.

He later informed the agent that he was traveling to Canada and would not be around to collect the deposit. Abdalla introduced them to the shop attendant to collect the deposit on his behalf.

The agent told the court that Abdalla once sold them 100 kilos of grains, but she did not know where he got them from. She produced two rent receipts with the names Chikanda and Shikanda.

A caretaker in Eastleigh where Abdalla set up the cereals shop, said that after paying Sh12,000 for rent and deposit, he added a further Sh16,000 to fix the door and windows. Police claimed the shop was a disguise; they used it as an armory.

The caretaker testified that Abdalla operated the business for a short while before he went missing and was unreachable on phone. He later testified that he once helped him exchange currency at a local bank in Nairobi’s CBD using his ID since Abdalla said that he had forgotten his at the house.

The State’s ninth witness said that Abdalla was expelled from the Alhadaad Islamic Centre in Gede, Malindi. The prosecution alleged that he had a brush with the police twice.

Here, the court heard, he was identified as Shariff Abdallah Mualim and worked as a taxi conductor.

A caretaker of a plot in Umoja in Nairobi testified that Abdalla had rented a shop on August 18, 2012, and he identified himself as Alex Shikanda.

Abdalla allegedly paid Sh20,500; out of which Sh9,000 was rent and Sh9,000 deposit, while Sh2,500 was electricity deposit. In one of his visits, the caretaker said he found Abdalla with three women whom he said would run the shop once he leaves for France.

Abdalla was alleged to have had a house in Manyatta, Lang’ata constituency, where he introduced himself as Alex to the 21st witness for the State. He was visiting his cereals business partner, the court was told.

Stripper for girlfriend

Milimani Court Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi (now a High Court Judge) heard that Abdalla also had a stripper for a girlfriend. The girl was also called as a witness.

She said she worked at a city nightclub where she met Abdalla on July 21, 2012, where he was a frequent visitor.

During one of their many conversations, the court heard, he told her that he did not like women who took alcohol and strippers. She testified that Abdalla told her that he ran a chemist in Eastleigh and he helped her open a business.

According to the investigators, Abdi and Yassin bought a Peugeot 505 registration number KAC 338Q from Dennis Karanja for Sh150,000 on September 12, 2012.  A mechanic at the garage opposite Yassin’s house said Abdalla and Yassin approached him to fix the car’s clutch. After testing the vehicle, he told them that it had no issue, and they later asked where they could get it tinted.

Their defence

In his defense, Abdi said that he was a student studying mathematics and languages and was arrested after attending prayers, after which he used a taxi to buy medicine in Eastleigh.

When the vehicle stopped at a petrol station, he was picked up by police officers who blindfolded him and taken to the house where the weapons were allegedly recovered.

He was uncovered and he saw Yassin before the two were blindfolded again and the police interrogated them for three days.

Police accused him of lying to a police officer and a Registrations Bureau official to get a police abstract for a lost ID, allegedly, yet he did not have one.

According to the testimony of an official Registrar of Persons, Abdi was registered as a refugee, and his two applications for ID were rejected. He denied being a member of Al Shabaab.

On his part, Yassin, who pleaded guilty to the charges, said that he was the only one in the house when the weapons were recovered from the kitchen of the house he had rented. He was staying with four other people.