Five men were charged on Thursday in connection with an attack by AL-shabaab gunmen on Garissa University in northeast part of Kenya that killed 148 students. Reuters reported
Four men from Kenya and one from Tanzania were charged in court for conspiring to commit “a terrorist act at Garissa University College” and other related offences, court documents showed.
The five are the first people to face formal charges over the attack.
This was the worst militant attack in the east African nation in almost two decades.
The assault on Garissa University in April has piled pressure on Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta to do more to secure the border and other regions.
Regional officials have reported that two- thirds of schools have had to shut because students are not willing to return there anymore.
Kenyatta has faced mounting criticism for not doing enough to halt a spate of attacks by al Shabaab, which has vowed to keep up assaults until Nairobi pulls its troops out of Somalia where they are part of an African Union peacekeeping force.
As well as Garissa, there have been assaults in the border region, along the coast and in the capital, including the 2013 Westgate shopping mall attack in which 67 people were killed.
The region along the long Somali border, already a desperately poor area, has been particularly hard hit.
In a move to curb the attacks by Al-shabaab, Kenya is building a barrier wall to separate Somali and Kenya. The project is expected to end before the end of the year.
