Spotlight: Kenyan massacre probe underscores home-grown terror threat

The latest findings of the probe into a recent terror attack in Kenya have aggravated concern that terror threats facing the country are increasingly localized.

The Kenyan Interior Ministry confirmed Sunday that a law graduate from a comfortable Kenyan family was among the four gunmen who slaughtered 148 people at Garissa University on Thursday. All attackers were killed by a SWAT team flown to Garissa.

The particular gunman, identified as Abdirahim Mohammed Abdullahi, was the son of a government chief in Mandera County, Interior Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said.

Abdullahi, who was an ethnic Somali, graduated with honor from the law school at Kenya University in 2013 and was described as "a talented lawyer-to-be" by people familiar with him.

According to the spokesman, Abdullahi's father reported to the authority last year that his son went missing and he feared the young man had gone to Somalia. The father had been assisting the police looking for his son before the college terror attack.

Media reports cited an unnamed official in Garissa County as saying that the local government was aware that Abdullahi joined Somalia-based and al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group al-Shabaab after graduation.

Soon after the Garissa attack, the deadliest on Kenyan soil since the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility.

The group said Saturday that the Garissa attack was to avenge the deaths of fighters killed by Kenyan troops in Somalia, and it warned that it will launch more attacks in Kenya.

Earlier investigation into the Garissa attack has led to the arrests of five suspects, one of whom is a security guard working for Garissa University.

The security guard, also an ethnic Somali, may have played a role in assisting the four attackers to enter the college compound. Police investigation also found that he possesses materials propagandizing extremist ideas.

Three of the five suspects in custody were nabbed at the Somali border on Friday while they were trying to flee. They were said to be associates of the mastermind of the Garissa attack, Mohamed Mohamud, also an ethnic Somali, on whom the Kenyan authorities have placed a 220,000-U.S.-dollar bounty.

Although the identities of the three other gunmen have not been confirmed yet, it is highly likely that they were also Kenyan nationals since they spoke the official language, Swahili, fluently during the almost 12-hour rampage at the university, according to recounts of survivors.

The sponsors and fund providers for such extremist attacks are "deeply rooted" in the Kenyan society, said Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday, the first day of a three-day national mourning.

He urged all Kenyans to work together to remove the scourge of terrorism, and promised that the authorities will spare no efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Endi