NAIROBI (Reuters) -A Kenyan court on Thursday sentenced two men to 30 years in prison for aiding a 2019 attack by militant members of the al Shabaab group on a hotel and office complex in Nairobi that killed 21 people.
Hussein Mohammed Abdile and Mohamed Abdi Ali were convicted in May on charges of facilitation and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism for helping the al Qaeda-linked Islamist group.
They had pleaded not guilty.
Al Shabaab regularly carries out attacks in Kenya to try to pressure the government to withdraw peacekeeping troops from Somalia, where al Shabaab is waging an insurgency to try to seize power.
Prosecutors said Abdile and Ali helped two of the attackers obtain forged identity cards that allowed them to escape from a refugee camp and provided financial support.
Abdile and Ali have 14 days to appeal their sentences.
Delivering her ruling on Thursday, Judge Diana Mochache said that without their involvement, the attack may not have happened.
“Without financiers, facilitators and sympathisers, terrorists cannot actualise their activities,” Mochache said.
In the January 2019 attack, several gunmen stormed the Dusit complex in Nairobi, triggering an assault and siege that lasted more than 12 hours.
The Kenyan government said at the time that it had killed all the attackers.
(Reporting by Humphrey Malalo and Vincent Mumo; Writing by Elias Biryabarema and George Obulutsa; Editing by Alexander Winning and Ed Osmond)
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