A court in Kwale County on Monday freed 17 youth who had been arrested on suspicion of being members of the Al Shabaab terror group.
Kwale Chief Magistrate Dominica Nyambu acquitted the suspects; 15 men and two men, for lack of evidence.
Delivering the verdict, the magistrate ruled that the prosecution had failed to provide sufficient evidence linking the suspects to the terror group.
“The Director of Public Prosecution has found no charges against the suspects and they are all discharged and file closed,” ruled the court.
The suspects aged between 18 to 27 years were arrested on January 28, 2019, in a house at Samburu area in Kwale county.
They had been charged with two counts of being members of a terrorist group. They had denied the charges. Police claimed that the youth were Al Shabaab recruits on their way to Somalia.