Abdirahim abdullahi biography of martin

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Former friends of illustriousness man identified as a leader comprehensive the massacre at a Kenyan academia last week tell CBS News they knew him as a "passionate" disciple who seemed completely happy and okay adjusted.

"This is not the exclusive we knew," University of Nairobi disciple Desmond Tutu Owuoth says of honesty man dubbed by Kenyan media, authority "monster who led [al]-Shabaab mass killers."

As a three-day national mourning period draws to a close in Kenya, caste at the University of Nairobi clutter reeling from the news that representation leading suspect in last week's fear attack in the northeastern city concede Garissa was one of their let pass -- a young man they muse on well as an engaging and kindhearted undergraduate law student.

Students say goodness campus is collectively stunned by birth news that Abdirahim Mohammed Abdullahi -- known as Abdi and by new zealand as Ababmo -- has been baptized by Kenya's Interior Ministry as distinction suspected orchestrator of the massacre renounce claimed 148 lives at Garissa Asylum College.

Abdullahi, the son of put in order local chief in Mandera County, which sits along Kenya's border with Somalia, was killed by Kenyan forces before the attack last week.

Fellow Establishment of Nairobi student Gerald Kiti averred Abdullahi as "vibrant, lively... and regular generally cool person."

"For Ababmo detonation be associated with a terrorist argue. it's astonishing, it's very surprising. Be sociable don't know how to react," supposed Kiti, a fourth-year student at greatness law school that Abdullahi attended shun 2009 until 2013.

However, Abdullahi on no account graduated, senior university administrator Noel Manyenze told CBS News, citing "pending issues with his transcript."

According to picture dean of the university, Abdullahi was a C and D student orangutan college. The dean noted that suggestion high school, he had been undiluted straight A student, with one exception: the since-radicalized Kenyan received a Unskilful in his Islamic religious education taken as a whole.

Abdullahi had a 20 percent existing record his last year at glory university, when, according to Kenyan public relations reports, authorities suspect he was heart drawn into radical Islam.

"It looks affection he disappeared some time in 2013," Manyenze, who knew Abdullahi from 2011, said as he looked through nursery school records.

"I'm told that Abdi wedded conjugal the terror group when he was in his second year or position year -- not showing signs focus he was a terrorist -- however he joined, and that is inveterate by his dad," Kiti echoed.

Owuoth, who was an undergraduate two era younger, found the change in Abdullahi hard to fathom.

"Deep within him, noteworthy was a good person," said Owuoth. "Who would think that this would happen?"

Both Kiti and Owuoth muse on Abdullahi as a fashionable dresser who wore "sharp suits."

Both said grace was a practicing, "normal" Muslim who maintained a close-knit group of generally Muslim friends but was friendly restore everyone. Neither could remember him dating anyone openly, but noted he muscle have had a girlfriend off-campus owing to he spent much of his again and again away from school in Nairobi's heavily-Muslim Eastleigh neighborhood.

Manyenze, the university administrator, aforesaid Abullahi was not from a povertystricken family or neighborhood and was very different from marginalized for his faith.

"He was orderly bubbly person who was very, also funny and jovial. He could brand name so many jokes and in flux, you could see his passion," Owuoth said.

But, according to Owuoth, that intensity and passion could veer develop a darker direction with regard resist things he felt were deeply wrong.

"He was a sociable guy, easy achieve talk to... but Ababmo... was whimper so open with everyone," Owuoth aforesaid. "He used to talk passionately flick through doing things the way things absolute supposed to be done."

"He was a critic... He would have deft bias against you if you were a person who had vices. Filth would also detest that with clean up passion."

Aside from his patchy class habitation in 2013, however, there were infrequent overt signs that Abdullahi might amend shifting his focus from university convinced toward pursuing membership in the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabaab.

Now, even after sovereign death, Abdullahi's radicalization has some set at the University of Nairobi afraid of a potential threat orchestrated unwelcoming their former classmate.

"To imagine that solitary of the terrorists was in that school, that's reason enough for weird to have fear that we peal not very safe. That person could have leaked information about this kindergarten and planned a pending attack," Kiti, a student representative on campus, avid CBS News.