Thursday December 3, 2015
By Joseph Akwiri
Jermaine John Grant, a British citizen, sits inside the dock at the Law Courts in the Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa, December 2, 2015.
A British man accused of helping plan attacks in Kenya was sentenced to nine years in jail on Wednesday after being found guilty of trying to obtain a fake passport.Jermaine Grant, from east London, still faces terrorism-related charges in a trial in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa. Prosecutors say Grant has ties to Somali Islamist rebels al Shabaab, but he denies the charges.
Grant was arrested in 2011 at an apartment in Mombasa and was found with bomb-making material and instructions on bomb-making, prosecutors said. He and several co-conspirators were planning attacks in Mombasa and on Western interests in the region, they added.Prosecutors say that, at the time, Grant was sharing the apartment with Samantha Lewthwaite, the so-called "White Widow" who was married to one of the bombers who carried out the 2005 attacks on public transport in London.
The Mombasa court found Grant guilty of nine counts related to the fake Kenyan passport, including giving a false statement and making false documents, and sentenced him to a year in prison for each count.
Grant's lawyer, Chacha Mwita, said he planned to appeal, adding: "The ruling is unfair in many aspects."
Grant is on trial with two co-defendants, his Kenyan female companion, Islam Warda, and Frank Nyengo, both of who deny the same charges and are out on bail. Another suspect, Fouad Abubakar, escaped after he had been released on bail.
(Editing by Edith Honan and Andrew Heavens)