Police allay fears of attempted terror attack at Multimedia University

Police have dismissed claims on social media that a student was arrested while assembling a home-made bomb at Multimedia University of Kenya in Nairobi on Thursday.

However, Nairobi County Police Commander Japhet Koome acknowledged that there was a scare at the university when people spotted a laptop motherboard and a capacitor that the student was working on for an academic project.

“We were called by the university and informed that there was a suspicious device [there] and so we sought the intervention of the Bomb Disposal Unit, who confirmed that the equipment was not harmful and had no explosives whatsoever,” Mr Koome said.

He added that the police picked up the device for testing before the owner was known.

And when the student arrived at the campus later, he went to school managers and reported that his project had been stolen.

“He was arrested and he is still being questioned because apart from causing panic, we also want to ascertain that he did not have an intention to devise anything harmful,” Mr Koome said.

He urged the public to desist from circulating images meant to cause panic and alarm, saying some images that had been shared online were not from the incident.

Elsewhere, a Nigerian student at United States International University-Africa (USIU) in Nairobi who went into hiding after allegedly raping a fellow student has been arrested.

The student, Entonu Daberechulwu, 19, is alleged to have raped a fellow student, also a Nigerian national, on May 19 before he disappeared.