Terrorists (illustration)
Terrorists (illustration)Flash 90

Kenya charged four men on Monday in connection with the Westgate mall massacre in September, in which at least 67 people were killed, AFP reports.

“The accused persons carried out a terrorist attack at Westgate Shopping Mall on September 21 by supporting a terrorist group,” the charge sheet quoted by the news agency read.

All pleaded not guilty to the charges, which also included entering Kenya illegally and obtaining false identification documents.

None are accused of being the gunmen in the mall.

The four, who are all ethnic Somalis, have been named as Mohammed Ahmed Abdi, Liban Abdullah, Adan Adan and Hussein Hassan.

The suspects, who had no lawyer, were remanded in custody for one week after the prosecution asked for more time for further investigations.

All the gunmen in the Westgate attack - totalling just four, not the dozen that security forces had initially reported - are understood to have died during the four-day siege.

Witnesses in the mall described how the gunmen stormed the crowded complex, firing from the hip and hurling grenades at shoppers and staff.

The gunmen coldly executed scores of people, with witnesses recounting how in some cases they called out to those wounded, then shot them at close range.

The attack was claimed by Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab group as retaliation for Kenya's military presence in Somalia.

Prior to the massacre, Kenya was reportedly warned by several countries, including Israel, that there was a high risk of an attack in the country.

Israeli services also reportedly played a lead role in the investigation into the attack.

Over the weekend, Kenya's air force bombed an Al-Shabaab training camp housing 300 terrorists in Somalia's south-western Dinsoor region.