Sunday, November 24, 2013
THE four Westgate attackers entered Kenya on
foot from Uganda, detectives have established. Two of the terrorists
have been identified as Mohammed Abdinur Said and Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow.
Police confirmed that 28 year-old Dhuhulow was a Norwegian as previously
reported.
CID detectives were sent to Kampala where they questioned a taxi
driver who drove the terrorists from Entebbe airport to the Malaba
border crossing. They then crossed over to Kenya on foot.
Police are protecting the identity of the taxi driver as he might
become a prosecution witness in the case against four Kenyans charged
with aiding the terrorists.
Reliable sources said the four men flew from Somalia to Kenya with a
local airline on June 22. The plane stopped at JKIA airport but the
suspects did not alight and proceeded to Entebbe. The terrorists killed
at least 67 people during the attack between September 21 and 24.
Norwegian police security service (Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste) on
Tuesday wrote to the CID to confirm that one terrorist was a Norwegian
of Somali descent.
According to the Norwegian police, Abdi Dhuhulow lived in Norway for
seven years after he was granted asylum in 2006 and had a cousin who
also lived in Norway.
They asked the CID for more time to get information about Dhuhulow
after it emerged that a man who he claimed in his immigration documents
was his father was actually his cousin.
After interrogating the cousin in Norway, the Norwegian police have
established that Dhuhulow's father still lives in Somalia. The second
named terrorist, Mohammed Abdinur Said, was a Somali refugee who stayed
at the Kakuma refugee camp until 2012. He then went back to Somalia
before returning to Kenya in June, police said.
It has also now emerged that the drone strike that killed al Shabaab
commander Abdi Fatah in October was linked to the Westgate attack.
Investigations revealed that Abdi Fatah spoke to Dhuhulow the day before
and even on the day of the attack. CCTV footage showed one terrorist
making telephone calls inside the mall.
Abdi Fatah was killed in al Shabaab's Baraawe stronghold by drones
aimed at Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, a senior Shabaab figure also
known as Ikrima.
Kenya Defence Forces spokesman Colonel Cyrus Oguna said Abdi Fatah,
alias Ballah, was killed alongside Abdullahi Ali, alias Ante Ante, also
an al Shabaab commander in the southern area controlled by Kenyan Amisom
troops.
"Ante Ante was very close to the overall Al-Shabaab commander Godane
(Ahmed Abdi) and so he was involved in the actual planning of the
Westgate attack." Col Oguna said.
Forensic investigations from Westgate are yet to be concluded. Ten
samples of badly charred bones, believed to be the remains of the four
terrorists, have been taken abroad for DNA testing with the assistance
of the FBI. The tests will be ready in one month.
Earlier this month four men were charged in a Nairobi court for
assisting the four Westgate attackers. Mohammed Ahmed Abdi, Omar Liban
Abdulle, Adan Mohammed Ibrahim and Hussein Hassan Mutafa have denied the
charges before magistrate D. Okundi who ordered that they be remanded
at Kilimani police station.