The Associated Press reports that a 26-year-old Kenyan man, Abdi Majid Yassin Mohammed, pleaded guilty Monday to possession of six bombs, including four suicide vests, and to being a member of the Somali Islamist extremist group al-Shabab. He and Omar Abdia Ada, 24, were arrested in Nairobi on Friday in a raid that police said disrupted the final stages in the planning of a major terrorist attack. Ada pleaded not guilty to 10 charges.
Abdi Majid Yassin Mohammed, 26, also known as Ali Hussein, had no defense attorney with him as he entered a guilty plea before magistrate Lucy Nyambura on charges that he was caught engaging in an organized criminal activity by being a member of al-Shabab, which has been outlawed in Kenya. The U.S. designated Al- Shabaab as a foreign terrorist organization in 2008.
Mohammed also admitted that he was in possession of the explosives, 12 grenades and 481 bullets but denied that he was in possession of four AK-47 rifles. His co-accused, Omar Abdi Ada, 24, also known as Salman Abdi, denied 10 charges against him including the weapons charges. The two suspects were unrepresented in court and spoke through interpreters. Ada is Somali.
Nyambura ordered Mohammed be taken for a psychiatric examination and be arraigned in court on Tuesday so that charges can read to him again.
The suspects were arrested Friday in a raid on a house in a residential area which police said disrupted the final stages of planning of a major terrorist attack. The house is in Eastleigh neighborhood in Nairobi where a large Somali community resides, earning it the name "little Mogadishu" —after Somalia's war-torn capital city.
After the raid police displayed suicide vests rigged with hundreds of metal ball bearings, two improvised explosive devices, also rigged with ball bearings, four AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition and 12 grenades. Police said the that the vests are similar to the type used in attacks in Uganda on crowds watching the soccer World Cup final on TV in July 2010, killing 76 people.
Read more at ABC News.