Kenya officials suspended over university massacre

The officials could also face charges of criminal negligence, as they appeared to have failed to mobilise ahead of the attack despite intelligence warnings

Nine Kenyan officials have been suspended and could face charges of criminal negligence over the massacre at Garissa university earlier this month, the government has said.

Militants from Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels attacked the university in the northeastern town on April 2, lining up non-Muslim students for execution and killing 148 people.

Kenya interior minister, Joseph Nkaissery said yesterday that the two civil servants and seven senior police officers in Garissa appeared to have failed to mobilise ahead of the attack despite intelligence warnings.

"I take this opportunity to warn all officers bestowed with the responsibility for the management of security across the country. Each will be held accountable for any acts of omission that endangers the lives and property of Kenyans," the minister told reporters.

He said the suspended officials were under investigation and would face formal criminal charges if evidence of negligence is uncovered.

The Kenyan government and the country's notoriously corrupt security forces have come in for renewed criticism following the massacre, with Kenyan media alleging that warnings were ignored, the university left virtually unguarded and response times slow.

Nkaissery, however, played down a controversy surrounding the use of a special police plane to transport the family of a senior police official back from their holiday on the coast on the day of the attack.

According to local media reports, elite anti-terror police had to wait several hours for the plane to pick them up from Nairobi for the Garissa mission.

But the interior minister insisted the plane was in the coastal region anyway on "an official training mission, and on its way back it gave a lift to the family" of the police air wing commander. He said this was authorised and did not affect the massacre response time.

The Garissa massacre was Kenya's deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi.

The government and the army has been trying to restore public confidence after the September 2013 Shebab attack on the Westgate shopping mall, which left 67 people dead.