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Kenya Jails Iranians for Life for Plotting Attacks


Sayed Mansour Mousavi (L) and Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammed listen to court preceeding before being sentenced to life in prison on terror-related charges, during their trial in Nairobi, May 6, 2013.
Sayed Mansour Mousavi (L) and Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammed listen to court preceeding before being sentenced to life in prison on terror-related charges, during their trial in Nairobi, May 6, 2013.
A Kenyan court sentenced two Iranian men to life in prison on Monday for planning to carry out bombings in Nairobi and other cities last year.

Ahmad Mohammed and Sayed Mousavi were found guilty last week of planning the attacks and also possessing 15 kg (33 pounds) of explosives. They were arrested in Nairobi in June.

Kenyan investigators said at the time of their arrest that it was unclear whether the pair had ties to al-Qaida-linked militants in Somalia or were part of another network.

Their lawyers said the two, who had both pleaded not guilty, would appeal their sentence.

Dozens of people were killed last year in a spate of bombings and attacks in the capital, the port city of Mombasa and the frontier region with Somalia.

The Nairobi government mostly blamed those incidents on the Somali al-Shabaab rebels, who Kenyan troops have been battling inside Somalia as part of a peacekeeping force.
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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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