Man's terror alert email to punish 'cheating' lover lands him in jail

Kahawa Law Courts Senior Principal Magistrate Gideon Kiage. [File, Standard] 

A 53-year-old man’s early-morning email to the Interpol alleging that his girlfriend was a terrorist has landed him in trouble.

Moses Kabali’s anger after their love fell apart will see him either serve five years in jail or pay a Sh5 million fine.

The email, sent on June 30 at 6.01am to the Interpol’s general secretariat, alleged that Judith Nyaranga and others were planning to carry out a terror attack in Kenya.

Kabali, a refugee from Uganda, alleged that he was a Somali national and that his girlfriend and a cousin had helped DusitD2 terror attack mastermind Ali Salim Gichunge’s wife Violet Kemunto escape to Somalia.

“My relative is a Somali trader and moves a lot from Mogadishu to Eastleigh. I believe she and another Kenya woman are serious, credible terrorists,” wrote Kabali.

Kahawa Law Courts magistrate, Gideon Kiage, said his anger indicated that Kabali wanted to destroy his lover’s life. “The circumstances of the offence as captured in the facts presented by the prosecutor and as admitted by the accused person both in mitigation and the pre-sentence report, reveal a devious and resentful individual on a rage fuelled mission with a singular goal of destroying the life of his estranged lover.”

The prosecution told the court that the accused knew he had falsely accused Nyaranga of a grave crime, which ultimately caused her and the public fear and panic.

Kabali was born in Mubende Mitiana in Kampala, but has been in Kenya for two decades. He told the court that he left the country as he was at loggerheads with the President Kaguta Museveni government over his human rights activism.

He said his first visited to Kenya was in 1997 to buy cooking oil and second-hand clothes to sell back in Uganda.

The convict was an Arabic studies teacher in Kenya.

A social inquiry report presented in court indicated that Kabali married in 1995 and has three children, two who are medical doctors in Uganda.

In 2008, he started cohabiting with one Hadra in Kenya, and they had a traditional wedding three years later. However, they separated in 2018 due to what he claimed to be threats by the Ugandan government for marrying a Somali woman.

A year later, he got into a relationship with Nyaranga.

From the report, Kabali claimed Nyaranga started changing and would spend days away, and they separated because she was cheating on him.

Kabali confirmed that the United Nations registered him as an asylum seeker, and was granted a refugee scholarship to study law at the University of London.

The man said he was emotionally unstable when he framed Nyaranga, claiming that he had emotionally and financially invested in her and sent the email to get revenge and punish her for cheating.

He apologised, telling the court that he had learned to manage his anger.

Kabali further claimed that his girlfriend had also spread false information among his friends, which resulted in ridicule for failing to perform his manly duties.

But the court said Kabali should have known the gravity of his actions, and that his terrorism allegations had potentially dreadful and far-reaching consequences for his girlfriend and the public.