Tor Lindseth/Associated Press -
Marie Benedicte Bjoernland, the head of the Norwegian domestic
intelligence service PST, poses for a picture in her office in Oslo,
Norway Wednesday Oct. 23 2013 during an interview with the Associated
Press. PST tried to prevent one of the suspected gunmen in the Nairobi
mall attack from joining Somali militants more than three years ago, but
failed to talk him out of it, Bjoernland said. The man has been
identified in Kenya as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a 23-year-old Somalia
native whose family moved to Norway in 1999.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Norway’s domestic intelligence service tried to prevent one of the
suspected gunmen in the Nairobi mall attack from joining Somali
militants more than three years ago, but failed to talk him out of it,
the agency’s chief said in an interview Wednesday.
The man has been identified in Kenya as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a
23-year-old Somalia native whose family moved to Norway in 1999.
Norwegian authorities have still not named him, and had previously not
said whether they knew of him before the four-day siege of the Westgate
mall that killed nearly 70 people in the Kenyan capital.
But Marie Benedicte Bjoernland, the head of Norwegian security
service PST, told The Associated Press that the Norwegian suspect was
well known to her agency and that it even tried to dissuade him from
becoming a jihadist.
“We had several talks with him ... before he
left Norway more than three years ago,” Bjoernland said at PST’s
headquarters in Oslo. “Obviously we didn’t succeed, but there was quite
an effort put into the preventive side of this.”
Bjoernland
declined to give details of the conversations, and said the Norwegian
“most likely” died in the attack, though PST investigators haven’t
confirmed that. The Kenyan government said Sunday it believes it has
recovered the remains of the four gunmen seen in CCTV footage carrying
out the attack.
Security camera images showed what appeared to be
Dhuhulow and three other gunmen firing coldly on shoppers as they made
their way along store aisles after storming the upscale mall.
The
Somali Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility, saying
the September attack was retribution for Kenya’s military involvement in
Somalia.
Dhuhulow’s sister told AP last week that her brother
went to the Somali capital of Mogadishu for a three-month visit in 2009,
then moved to Somalia for good in March of the following year. She said
she didn’t believe he was among the gunmen seen in the footage.
Just
days after Dhuhulow’s identity became known, Norwegian police issued
international alerts for two Norwegian-Somali sisters, ages 16 and 19,
who told their family they were traveling to Syria to join the civil
war. They were last spotted on the Turkish-Syrian border.
“We see
a growing problem when it comes to people traveling to war zones, and
specifically the last year we’ve seen a growing number of persons
traveling to Syria,” Bjoernland said.
She said between 30-40
people have left Norway to take part in the Syrian civil war, but added
that the number is uncertain and may be bigger.
That conflict has
attracted hundreds of foreign fighters from European countries, many of
whom have joined Islamic militant groups. Western security services are
concerned that they could pose terror threats when they return home with
combat experience and terrorist training — and possibly traumatized.
“When they are radicalized and when they are determined to go, for
instance to Syria or other conflict areas, we don’t have many legal
measures to stop them,” Bjoernland said.
Norway just recently made
it illegal to receive training from terror groups. But even with that
law it is difficult for authorities to prove that a suspected want-to-be
militant is traveling abroad to train with or join jihadist groups.
“We do preventive work. We talk to them. We try to persuade them not to
go, because it’s a dangerous journey,” Bjoernland said. “I wish we were
more successful. We have succeeded in turning some around from
traveling. But quite a few have actually left.”
She called on
other parts of society, including parents, child protective services,
police and Muslim leaders to intervene when young Muslims are at risk of
becoming radicalized.