Court cuts sentence in al-Shabaab case

A Danish court on Monday cut a prison sentence given to two Danish brothers of Somali origin convicted for attending a training camp run by Somalia's Islamist al-Shabaab rebels.

 

A court in the central city of Aarhus cut the jail sentence for Guleed Mohamed Warsame, 25, and Nuur Mohamed Warsame, 20, to two years from three and a half years for conspiring to send, and sending, the 25-year-old to a Shabaab-run training camp in Somalia.

 

The previous conviction by a district court was the first under a new Danish law against training with the aim of carrying out a terrorist act.

 

"A majority didn't find sufficient basis that (the older) came to be trained in bomb-making, use of weapons or similar," the High Court of Western Denmark said in a statement.

 

"There was only a basis for finding the defendants guilty of attempt[ing]" to be trained, it said.

 

Both men had been jailed for just over two years and were released after the verdict was announced.

 

The younger brother had stayed behind in Aarhus, where they have lived for more than 16 years, and from where he helped plan the trip and provided his brother with "advice and  encouragement."

 

Somalia's al-Shabaab have carried out a string of revenge attacks for Kenya's military role in southern Somalia, including last year's siege of the Westgate shopping mall that left 67 people dead.

 

Attacks earlier this month on the coastal Mpeketoni district left at least 60 dead and were claimed by al-Shabaab insurgents, though President Uhuru Kenyatta blamed "well-planned, orchestrated and politically motivated ethnic violence" carried out by "local political networks".