NAIROBI, July 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A court in Kenya has sentenced a militant to life in prison for his role in the 2015 Garissa University College attack, which left 148 people dead.
Two other militants were jailed for 41 years each.
The three had earlier been found guilty of conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack and of belonging to al-Shabaab, which is linked to al-Qaeda.
It was the second-deadliest attack in Kenya.
The al-Qaeda bombing of the US embassy in 1998 killed more than 200 people.
Rashid Charles Mberesero, who was given a life sentence, is a Tanzanian, while the other two men, Mohamed Ali Abikar and Hassan Edin Hassan, are Kenyans.
Mberesero was given the longest term because he was arrested at the scene of the massacre and could not explain his presence, the court heard.
The attack was carried out by al-Shabaab at the north-eastern Kenyan university in April 2015.
The four gunmen were killed at the scene and the man who plotted the attack, Mohamed Kuno, was killed in a raid in Somalia in 2016.
The trial has been beset by changes of magistrates and witnesses not showing up in court.
The three were eventually convicted last month.
In the early hours of April 2, 2015, heavily armed attackers stormed Garissa University College and shot dead two security guards before aiming fire at students.
The gunmen raided the campus, attacking students in their classrooms while they were preparing for exams.
More than 500 students managed to escape, some through a fence. Some locked themselves in rooms and cupboards.
Seventy-nine were injured in the attack.
Wearing suicide vests, the four gunmen were eventually surrounded in a dormitory where the vests detonated and they died.
Out of the 148 people that were killed in the Garissa massacre, 142 were students.
Officials say three members of the security forces were killed as well as three university guards. — NNN-AGENCIES
