Court quashes 10-year jail term against widow of Aboud Rogo

The widow of slain Muslim cleric Aboud Rogo, Hania Sagar jailed for ten years for conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack has been  acquitted.

High Court Judge Dorah Chepkwony quashed the 10 years jail term handed by a magistrate court and ordered that she be set free. The judge ruled that the appellant was wrongly convicted in an offence of conspiracy to commit a felony.

SIMILAR OFFENCE

"The trial court should have proceeded to acquit the appellant after acquitting three other suspects who were charged with the similar offence," the judge ruled.

The judge further ruled that the circumstantial evidence that the magistrate used to convict the appellant could not sustain the conviction.

Justice Chepkwony said there was no link between the appellant and three slain terrorists who were killed at Central Police Station while attempting to commit a terrorist attack.

"The only link was that the appellant and the slain terrorists all  registered their mobile phone numbers at the same time, three months prior to the attack at the police station, this could have been a case of coincidence," the judge ruled.

APPEAL DOCUMENTS

The judge said that the alleged communication between the slain terrorists and the appellant did not in any way support the offence of conspiracy to commit a felony.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) through State counsel Ngina Mutua have applied for stay of the judgement pending appeal.

She said the DPP is dissatisfied with the judgement and is intending to challenge it.

Ms Sagar had appealed against the ten-year jail term handed to her by a magistrate court in February this year.

The appellant had been convicted over terrorists attack at a police station in Mombasa two years ago.

HARSH AND EXCESSIVE

In her appeal documents, Ms Sagar described the sentence by the Senior Principal Magistrate Diana Mochache as “illegal, harsh and excessive."

She argued before appellate court that she was jailed on the basis of “incurable defective charge that did not disclose an offence in law.”

She had  faulted the trial court for convicting her “by taking into account irrelevant and extraneous matters, unsubstantiated personal insinuations, assumptions and speculative conclusions that were never backed by evidence."

Ms Mochache while jailing her said she had been in constant communication with three slain terrorists who attacked Central police station on September 11, 2016.

SLAIN TERRORISTS

The slain terrorists Tasnim Yakub, Ramla Abdirahman Hussein and Maimuna Abdirahman were killed after a foiled attack at the police station.

She argued argued  that the charge of committing a felony, preferred against her legally collapsed after the magistrate court acquitted her co-accused Ms Luul Ali Tahli, Ms Nasteho Ali Tahli and Ms Zamzam Abdallahi , who are relatives of the three slain girls - rendering her the lone suspect.

She argued that she had been convicted on non-existence circumstantial evidence.