Kenyan massacre: Al-Shabaab gunman is son of govt official

One of the al-Shabaab gunmen who killed about 150 students at a Al-Shabaab gunman Kenya has been identified as the son of a government official.

Kenya’s interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said the gunman, named as Abdirahim Abdullahi, had been known to police as his father had reported his disappearance to security officials.

Abdullahi’s father, a chief in Mandera County, fearing his son had travelled to Somalia, had already been helping police to trace his whereabouts by the time the brutal attack on the university occurred.

“The father had reported to security agents that his son had disappeared from home… and was helping the police try to trace his son by the time Garissa terror attack happened,” Njoka told Reuters news agency.

Abdullahi has been identified as one of the masked gunmen who stormed the Garissa campus. A Garissa-based official who did not wish to be named said the gunman was a former University of Nairobi law student, and that he had joined al-Shabaab after graduating in 2013: “He was a very brilliant student. But then he got these crazy ideas.”

Mr Njoka said it was not clear where Abdullahi worked before he disappeared last year.

Five people have been detained by police on suspicion of being involved in the brutal attack and authorities are offering a $220,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Dulyadin Gamadhere, a former teacher at a Kenyan Islamic school and who is believed to have orchestrated last week’s attack.

A survivor from that attack, Cynthia Cheroitich, who emerged two days later said she hid herself in a wardrobe and refused to emerge from her hideout even when some of her classmates obeyed the demands of the gunmen.

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