Kenyan court acquits three female Al-Shabaab suspects

By Fauxile Kibet

MOMBASA, KENYA: Three women who had been held over suspicion of being members of the Somalia based Al-Shabaab terror group have been acquitted by a court in Mombasa Kenya.

Ummulkheir Sadri Abdalla, Khadija Abubakar Abdulkarim and Halima Aden had been arrested in March 2015 in in the border town of Elwak and accused of attempting to cross over to Somalia to join the Al-Shabaab.

The three were charged in a Mombasa court on 20 counts, including being members of a terror outfit, collecting and holding information on terrorism and being involved in recruiting and training terrorists.

But while delivering his ruling, Mombasa chief Magistrate Evans Makori argued that the prosecution had presented evidence based on videos found on mobile phones and hence not sufficient to support the case against the three.

The videos are said to have shown terror activities but the magistrate said that the evidence was not “proof enough that the women were members of a terror organization.”

The magistrate also said that the prosecution had failed to identify the people the accused women were communicating with in Somalia.

One other suspect, Maryam Said Aboud who had been arrested alongside the three accused died in May this year.