March 24 (EUROPA PRESS) –
A Kenyan court on Friday rejected appeals filed by two of those convicted for their role in the 2015 attack on Garissa University, which left nearly 150 dead.
Those sentenced, Hassan Edin Hassan and Mohamed Abdi Abikar, were found guilty of having knowledge of the plans for the attack and were sentenced in 2019 to 41 years in prison. A third defendant, Rashid Charles Mberesero, a Tanzanian national, received a life sentence.
However, Hassan and Abikar later filed appeals arguing that the sentences against them were excessive, although Judge Cecilia Githua rejected this point on Friday and stressed that the sentences handed down fall within current legislation, as reported by the Kenyan newspaper ‘The Standard’.
“The court considers that they knew about the plot and were part of the attackers, since they were arrested when they were traveling from Garissa two days after the attack,” the judge said. Originally, there were four people accused in the case, although one was acquitted.
The attack was carried out by members of the Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab, which maintains ties to the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, posing as worshipers going to pray at the campus mosque. The group said it was a response to the Kenyan military intervention in Somalia.
Kenyan troops are part of a peacekeeping force of 22,000 troops whose main objective is to guarantee the security of a country that has lived in a state of permanent crisis since 1991. Al Shabaab already assaulted the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi on September 21, 2013 , which resulted in 72 deaths and some 200 wounded. Then he released the Muslim hostages and held the Christians until the end of the takeover, as happened at the University of Garissa.
