Saturday February 17, 2018
Haniya Said, the wife of slain controversial Muslim Cleric Aboud Rogo. A Mombasa court sentenced her to ten years in jail on February 16, 2018. PHOTO | WACHIRA MWANGI | NATION
A Kenyan court on Friday sentenced the widow of a radical imam to 10 years in prison for her role in a failed attack on a police station in the port city Mombasa.
Haniya Said was found guilty of conspiracy for supporting an attack in which three women fire-bombed the city’s main police station on September 11, 2016, wielding knives and stabbing an officer.
All three attackers were shot dead.
“Guilty of the offence of conspiracy,” said magistrate Diana Mochache. “I hereby sentence you to 10 years in prison.”
The attackers were said to be supporters of the Islamic State group.
Said is the widow of Aboud Rogo Mohammed, an imam killed in Mombasa in August 2012 who was until his death the main preacher at the city’s Musa mosque, seen as the heart of radical Islam in Kenya.
The imam was accused of recruiting young Kenyans to fight in neighbouring Somalia with Shabaab, East Africa’s long-time branch of Al-Qaeda, Islamic State’s rivals.