Four terror suspects deny charges in Kenyan court

NAIROBI - Four men suspected to be behind the Sept 21 terror attack on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall on Monday denied seven charges in a Kenyan court.

The four Somali nationals faced a total of seven counts when they appeared before the acting chief magistrate, Dolphin Okundi, in Nairobi where they were later remanded for a week.

The suspects are Mohammed Ahmed Abdi, Liban Abdullah Omar, Alias Ibrahim alias Adan Dheqand Hussein Hassan Mustafah.

The court was forced to get a Somali translator as the suspected insisted that they could not understand English or Swahili.

The prosecution accuses the four suspects of carrying out a terror act and committing the offences jointly with others who were not in court.

The first count alleges that the four committed a terror act, jointly with others not before court, on September 21 at Westgate where at least 67 people were killed and more than 170 others injured.

Abdi, Mustafah and Omar were separately accused of knowingly supporting Mohammed Abdinur Said, Hassan Dhuhullow and others in committing the terror attack.

Norwegian tax records show a Dhuhulow was born in 1990 and was registered at an address in Larvik, southern Norway, as late as 2009.

Dhuhulow was in March acquitted of murdering Somali journalist Hassan Yusuf Absuge in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

The prosecution told the magistrate that on or before October 7 at Salman al-Farsi Madrassa along Muyuyu Avenue Eastleigh, which is largely inhabited by Kenyans of Somali origin, he knowingly harbored Abdikadir Hared Mohammed, a terror suspect.

According to the charge sheet, Dheq willfully and by false pretences procured registration as a Kenyan citizen on or before July 13, 2010.

It is alleged that he committed the offence at the national registration bureau office in the border town of Mandera, where he was issued with a Kenyan identity card No 27168535.

The suspects who were not legally represented denied the charges and were remanded at the police station for seven days as police continue with further investigations.

They will be brought back to court on November 11 when their bail application will be argued.

The move comes after the government sacked 15 immigration officers following an audit on the Westgate attack.