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Suspected al Shabaab recruiter Samuel Wanjala Wabwile claims he was victimised
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
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A suspected Al-Shabaab recruiter formerly a Maseno University Political Science student Samuel Wanjala Wabwile alias Salim Muhamud Wabwile accused of recruiting seven primary pupils into the Al-Shabaab is set to know his fate on 7th January 2016 when the court will pass his sentence.
Yesterday Wabwile, in his defense at Mombasa Law Courts before Principle Magistrate Diana Mochache, said he was just a victim of circumstances who had been framed by the committee members of Gotani Primary School who wanted him out of the school.
Wabwile denied being a member of the Al-Shabaab terror group and that he never taught any student radical issues. Wabwile said that he had no witness to call on because he had made his defense and it was upon the case to find that he was a victim of circumstance and hatred.
“I am a victim of circumstances and hatred, if the school and parents never wanted me in the village, they should have informed me to leave because I have plans to pursue my education further,” said Wabwile. He said that he had been appointed as a sheikh at Liwatoni Mosque in Kaloleni by Sheikh Hassan Omar to teach Islam and that was what he did.
“I was employed by Hassan Omar to assist in teaching at the mosque, I went there not to convert any child and I never taught radical subjects but just Islamic Religious Education,” said Wabwile.
He however said there was a conflict between the Muslim parents and the non-Muslim parents over the registration of a nursery school into a fully-fledged Muslim nursery. Wabwile said that the headmaster of Gotani Primary School and the committee of the primary school with the non-Muslim parents were against the idea of having the nursery registered as a Muslim institution.
“The headmaster of the school where the nursery was and the non-Muslim parents said that Muslim laws were hard, including having their children wear hijabs, carry water all the time and pray four times a day,” said Wabwile.
He said the tension escalated when he was elected to teach Islamic Religious Education at the primary school by both the mosque and primary committee after the Muslim parents complained that their children were being taught Christian Religious Education (CRE) against their will. The accused said that he started teaching IRE during the weekend because he did not want to interfere with the week day school curriculum.
He said the school committee and the head teacher was not happy when the parents started to bring their children for IRE lessons at the mosque on weekends.
“The school committee formulated a way to remove me from the school, so they decorated the shirts “Radical Boys and Radical Youths” because I was at police custody at Mariakani by the time the issue of shirts was brought up,” said Wabwile.
In a cross examination by state prosecutor Eugene Wangila, Wabwile said that he was suspended from the university for 1, 000 days because he organised and participated in a strike by political science students. He said that at that time he was 21 years and the strike was because one of their colleagues had been beat up by the security guards. The accused was arrested at Kaloleni Kilifi County last month for allegedly radicalizing and recruiting seven boys from Gadini Primary School in Kaloleni into the terror group and a member of Al-Shabaab.
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