The East African nation has suffered a string of deadly attacks by
al Shabaab in recent years, which scared away tourists and damaged
economic growth.
Kenyan teacher jailed for enlisting pupils into militant group(News USA UK)
A Kenyan primary school teacher who recruited pupils into the Islamist militant group al Shabaab in neighbouring Somalia was sentenced to 20 years in jail by a court on Thursday.
The judge ruled the teacher, Samuel Wanjala Wabwile alias Salim Mohamed Wabwile,
had taken advantage of poverty in the coastal county of Kilifi where
school children walk in tattered uniforms without shoes to bait them
using incentives like food.
The East
African nation has suffered a string of deadly attacks by al Shabaab in
recent years, which scared away tourists and damaged economic growth.
Officials
say dozens of youths have crossed into Somalia in the past three years
for training by the militants after being recruited and radicalised at
home.
Wabwile was arrested in June last year and
charged with three counts, including being a member of al Shabaab. The
court convicted him of radicalising his pupils during Islamic lessons at
the school where he taught in Kilifi, contrary to the law on the
prevention of terrorism.
"The accused preyed on the pupils' feeble minds to impart his ideological beliefs," magistrate Diana Mochache said.
Al
Shabaab is blamed for attacks in parts of Kenya including one in April
last year on Garissa University in the east where 148 students were
killed.
In June 2014, the group killed 65 people
over a 24-hour period in and around Mpeketoni in Lamu county. It was
also responsible for a raid on Nairobi's Westgate Mall in 2013 that
killed 67 people.
The group seeks to overthrow the
Western-backed Somali government and impose its strict interpretation
of Islamic law. It has said it has targeted Kenya because of its
participation in an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.
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