The 2015 Garissa University Attack

The attack

On the morning of April 2, 2015, attackers entered Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya. The assault killed 148 people and injured many others. Most of those killed were students. The event became one of the deadliest attacks in Kenya's modern history.

Al-Shabaab claimed the attack. The four direct attackers died during the security response. The criminal cases that followed therefore focused on people accused of helping plan, support or facilitate the operation rather than on the gunmen who carried out the killings inside the university.

The prosecution of alleged facilitators

The Nairobi trial involved several defendants and a very large number of counts. In June 2019, Hassan Edin Hassan, Mohamed Abdi Abikar and Tanzanian national Rashid Charles Mberesero were convicted of terrorism-related offences connected to the attack. Sahal Diriye Hussein was acquitted for lack of evidence.

In July 2019, Mberesero received a life sentence. Hassan and Abikar received lengthy prison terms that, as structured by the trial court, included sentences for conspiracy, the substantive attack-related counts and membership in al-Shabaab. Mberesero died in custody in November 2020.

The 2023 High Court appeal

Hassan and Abikar appealed. On March 24, 2023, Justice Cecilia Githua delivered judgment in the consolidated appeals. The High Court upheld their convictions for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and for the attack-related counts, finding the circumstantial evidence sufficient to establish that they knew about the planned attack and aided the operation.

The High Court did not, however, uphold every conviction. It quashed the separate counts alleging membership in al-Shabaab because the prosecution had not proved those membership offences to the required standard.

The practical result was a substantial reduction in the total time they were required to serve. The surviving principal sentence was 25 and a half years, with the conspiracy sentence running concurrently. Reporting on the judgment commonly rounded that outcome to approximately 26 years.

Why the legal distinction matters

It would be inaccurate to say the 2023 appeal simply “confirmed everything” from the trial court. The main terrorism convictions survived, but the membership counts did not. It would also be inaccurate to describe the convicted men as the gunmen who physically carried out the massacre; the direct attackers died during the attack.

For that reason, this page uses Solved / Adjudicated to describe the legal accountability that was actually established while preserving the narrower scope of each defendant's proven responsibility.

Victims and later civil accountability

In July 2024, a three-judge High Court bench in a separate constitutional case ordered compensation for families of the 148 people killed and for injured survivors. The judgment and reporting around it again documented the human scale of the attack and the continuing legal consequences beyond the criminal trial of alleged facilitators.

That civil judgment does not change the criminal convictions, but it reinforces why victim accounting must remain central to the case file rather than being reduced to the names of attackers or defendants.

Timeline

Current status

The file is classified Solved / Adjudicated as to the convicted facilitators. The attack itself killed 148 people. The 2023 High Court judgment preserved the central conspiracy and attack-related convictions against Hassan and Abikar while quashing membership counts, leaving the principal prison term at 25 and a half years.

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