Kenya Names “First Class” Law Graduate Among Gunmen In Student Massacre

Kenya authorities have named one of the gunmen who killed 148 people in a university massacre as an ethnic Somali Kenyan national and law graduate, highlighting the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab’s ability to recruit within the country.

Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said high-flying Abdirahim Abdullahi was “a university of Nairobi law graduate and described by a person who knows him well as a brilliant upcoming lawyer”.

The spokesman said Abdullahi’s father, a local official in the northeastern county of Mandera, had “reported to the authorities that his son had gone missing and suspected the boy had gone to Somalia”.

Describing Abdullahi as an A-grade student, Njoka said it was “critical that parents whose children go missing or show tendencies of having been exposed to violent extremism report to authorities”.

Kenya entered the second of three days of national mourning on Monday for those killed in last week’s massacre, the vast majority of whom were students.

Hundreds had packed Nairobi’s Anglican cathedral on Sunday, where Archbishop Eliud Wabukala said Easter services were overshadowed by “great and terrible evil” as police patrolled outside.

“These terrorists want to cause divisions in our society, but we shall tell them, ‘You will never prevail’,” the archbishop said.