A man convicted of being a member of a terror group will serve 10 years in prison after the High Court dismissed his appeal.
Milimani High Court Judge Kanyi Kimondo threw out the case by Ismael Mona Otieno alias Dida Muhajir who sought to be acquitted of the charges on grounds that the prosecution illegally acquired the evidence used against him.
He was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for the offence of being a member of an outlawed group.
In his appeal, the accused person wanted the court to set aside the verdict by Senior Principal Magistrate Bernard Ochoi and acquit him of the offence claiming that the evidence relied upon by the prosecution was illegally obtained as investigators had not obtained warrants to search electronic gadgets (9 mobile phones) recovered from the accused person.
Further he argued that the prosecution did not call crucial witnesses from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).
The prosecution presented three witnesses before court whose testimonies proved that the appellant was indeed a member of the ISIS and that he had been contracted to translate Arabic materials into Kiswahili and disseminate them to the members.
They testified that he was also found in possession of nine mobile phones that contained 100 disturbing images of dead bodies which established to be articles in committing a terrorist act.
Kimondo ordered that the convictions for the first six counts, related to being a member of a terrorist group and possession of an article connected with the commission of a terrorist Act contrary to section 30 of the Act be upheld and the accused person to serve 10 years concurrently, while the conviction for count 7-11 related to information collection contrary to section 29 of the Act, were set aside.
Otieno came to Counter Terrorism Division focus after he was suspected to be a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) with extremist associates in Kenya, Somalia and Syria.
He was reported to have been harboring plans to travel to Syria via Turkey with the intention of joining ISIL.
He attended madrassa at Amaarifa in Kikambala in 2013 where he was radicalized.
Otieno was arrested on July 11 2019 at JKIA on his way back to Kenya from Saudi Arabia.
Following his arrest and subsequent interviews conducted on him, an in-depth and focused online investigation was instigated targeting to decrypt communication in his highly encrypted social media accounts that he used to plan, radicalize and propagate extremist materials to his online associates in Kenya, Puntland, Tanzania, Syria and DRC.
His nine mobile phones confiscated at his time of arrest were subjected to online forensics with a view of establishing his associates as well as recovering any possible radical materials which Ismael might have deleted from his phones. However, the cyber experts at the Anti-Terror Police Unit (ATPU) were able to recover his deleted accounts and discovered his plans to radicalize youths with an ultimate aim of committing a terrorist attack in Kenya and its neighboring countries.
The matter was prosecuted by Kennedy Panyako, Kiprono Kibiwott and Harrison Kiarie.
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