This archive report was first published on 15 July 2019.
On April 2, 2015, Al Shabaab terrorists stormed Garissa University College, killing 148 people mostly students in one of the deadliest attacks in Kenya's history.
According to a judgement by a Magistrates Court in Nairobi, failure to act on prior warnings about an impending infiltration and attack facilitated the raid.
Witnesses testified that terrorists called out people by names during the attack, suggesting they had prior knowledge of the facility.
University student Collin Waliaula, who was the first State witness, told the court that he thought the attack was an inside job.
Waliaula testified that he heard the attackers call out names of the people they wanted to kill, including the students' council chairman, Laban Kweya, and a professor.
He recounted that the attack started at 5am when the calm morning turned into a hell-hole of gunshots, shouts, and wails from those who were maimed and dying.
Security agents eventually arrived four hours later, but not before the attackers had killed many students.
Former head of security Elias Wambugu testified that he had received intelligence reports of the impending attack but the police did not beef up security at the university.
Wambugu narrated that he informed two Administration Police officers about the intelligence but they did not take action.
He also testified that when he started hearing gunshots, he called the two officers but none of them picked his calls.
Unarmed guards and students were left at the attackers' mercy, and it emerged that their boss was in a sewer making frantic calls for help.
Everlyn Chepkemoi, a student who survived the attack, recounted that she was leading prayers with 36 members of the Christian Union when the terrorists stormed in and started spraying them with bullets.
She was hit by a bullet on the right hand but managed to escape.
The court heard that the terrorists had infiltrated the university before the attack, and the security blunders led to the deaths of many students.
