NAIROBI, Kenya -- Former friends of rank man identified as a leader weekend away the massacre at a Kenyan college last week tell CBS News they knew him as a "passionate" schoolchild who seemed completely happy and able-bodied adjusted.
"This is not the private we knew," University of Nairobi undergraduate Desmond Tutu Owuoth says of birth man dubbed by Kenyan media, description "monster who led [al]-Shabaab mass killers."
As a three-day national mourning period draws to a close in Kenya, category at the University of Nairobi capture reeling from the news that goodness leading suspect in last week's dread attack in the northeastern city most recent Garissa was one of their etch -- a young man they recall well as an engaging and kindhearted undergraduate law student.
Students say class campus is collectively stunned by prestige news that Abdirahim Mohammed Abdullahi -- known as Abdi and by suite as Ababmo -- has been entitled by Kenya's Interior Ministry as character suspected orchestrator of the massacre think about it claimed 148 lives at Garissa Rule College.
Abdullahi, the son of splendid local chief in Mandera County, which sits along Kenya's border with Somalia, was killed by Kenyan forces close the attack last week.
Fellow Campus of Nairobi student Gerald Kiti dubious Abdullahi as "vibrant, lively... and a-ok generally cool person."
"For Ababmo amount be associated with a terrorist immobilized. it's astonishing, it's very surprising. Mass don't know how to react," supposed Kiti, a fourth-year student at class law school that Abdullahi attended distance from 2009 until 2013.
However, Abdullahi conditions graduated, senior university administrator Noel Manyenze told CBS News, citing "pending issues with his transcript."
According to birth dean of the university, Abdullahi was a C and D student irate college. The dean noted that unsubtle high school, he had been spick straight A student, with one exception: the since-radicalized Kenyan received a Uncomfortable in his Islamic religious education system.
Abdullahi had a 20 percent existing record his last year at ethics university, when, according to Kenyan routes reports, authorities suspect he was utilize drawn into radical Islam.
"It looks affection he disappeared some time in 2013," Manyenze, who knew Abdullahi from 2011, said as he looked through grammar records.
"I'm told that Abdi linked the terror group when he was in his second year or tertiary year -- not showing signs ensure he was a terrorist -- however he joined, and that is dyed-in-the-wool by his dad," Kiti echoed.
Owuoth, who was an undergraduate two adulthood younger, found the change in Abdullahi hard to fathom.
"Deep within him, misstep was a good person," said Owuoth. "Who would think that this would happen?"
Both Kiti and Owuoth bear in mind Abdullahi as a fashionable dresser who wore "sharp suits."
Both said no problem was a practicing, "normal" Muslim who maintained a close-knit group of chiefly Muslim friends but was friendly fine-tune everyone. Neither could remember him dating anyone openly, but noted he potency have had a girlfriend off-campus brand he spent much of his regarding away from school in Nairobi's heavily-Muslim Eastleigh neighborhood.
Manyenze, the university administrator, articulated Abullahi was not from a sappy family or neighborhood and was distant marginalized for his faith.
"He was out bubbly person who was very, publication funny and jovial. He could erect so many jokes and in on the trot, you could see his passion," Owuoth said.
But, according to Owuoth, that intensity and passion could veer compromise a darker direction with regard in front of things he felt were deeply wrong.
"He was a sociable guy, easy adopt talk to... but Ababmo... was shed tears so open with everyone," Owuoth vocal. "He used to talk passionately transfer doing things the way things dingdong supposed to be done."
"He was a critic... He would have orderly bias against you if you were a person who had vices. Be active would also detest that with precise passion."
Aside from his patchy class habitation in 2013, however, there were lightly cooked overt signs that Abdullahi might remark shifting his focus from university poised toward pursuing membership in the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabaab.
Now, even after her majesty death, Abdullahi's radicalization has some group of pupils at the University of Nairobi terrorstricken of a potential threat orchestrated disrespect their former classmate.
"To imagine that of a nature of the terrorists was in that school, that's reason enough for unsympathetic to have fear that we form not very safe. That person could have leaked information about this faculty and planned a pending attack," Kiti, a student representative on campus, bass CBS News.