Hiiraan Online
Tuesday March 19, 2019
Sakina Mariam Abdalla (second left) with other suspects when they appeared in a Nairobi court on Monday, January 21, 2019. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Nairobi (HOL) - The mother of the alleged mastermind behind the Dusit terror attack has been freed on Monday on a Ksh1 million ($9,935 USD) bail with an alternative bond of Ksh 2 million.
Sakina Mariam Abdalla, the mother of Ali Salim Gichunge, was arrested on February 22 and charged by Kenyan authorities after she failed to disclose the whereabouts of her son to the police.
The prosecution alleges that Ms.Abdalla declined to speak with authorities on the whereabouts of Mr. Gichunge on several occasions between 2015 and 2019.
Authorities say her unwillingness to cooperate with authorities deprived them of knowledge that they could have used to thwart the DusitD2 hotel attack in mid-January that killed 21 people.
During her initial arraignment last month, investigators said that review of her mobile phone call data revealed that Ms. Abdalla was in constant communications with several phone numbers traced to Somalia. It is alleged that she was in communication with her son.
Ms. Abdalla told police that she had sporadic contact with her son, whom she says, went underground in 2014 after a few brief stints working at various cyber cafes in Isiolo and Mombasa. She said she received a phone call from Mr. Gichunge in 2016, informing her that he landed a scholarship in Mogadishu to study Islamic Religious Education. Ms. Abdallah says that was the last time she heard from him until the attack
As a condition of her bail, Milimani Chief Magistrate Martha Mutuku ordered Ms. Abdalla to surrender all her travel documents to the court, not to contact any witnesses in the case and to report monthly to the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU).
The judge stated that a breach of any of the set conditions will lead to cancellation of her bail/bond.
Ms. Abdalla will be back in court on April 1, 2019, for pretrial proceedings.