NAIROBI: Kenyan police are holding five people over last month’s attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall, a top officer said Tuesday, adding they hoped to charge them soon.
At least 67 people were killed in the attack on the upmarket mall claimed by Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shabab insurgents.
Ndegwa Muhoro, head of Kenya’s Police Criminal Investigation Department, told reporters that investigations were still ongoing into exchanges of mobile telephone text messages in the days prior to the four-day siege that began on September 21.
“We wanted to arraign five of the terrorists in court yesterday, but we have decided to first investigate an SMS exchange of the terrorists which occurred on September 17,” he said.
“There are various issues which need thorough investigation, we cannot rush to court.” However, all gunmen — totaling just four, not the dozen that security forces had initially reported — are understood to have died during the attack.
“Interpol is also assisting us in the investigations, including the analysis of four bodies suspected to be of the terrorists,” Muhoro said.
A telephone call was made during the attack to Norway, he added.
A Norwegian citizen of Somali origin is suspected of being one of the attackers, a 23-year-old named by media as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow.
Meanwhile Kenya’s army chief Julius Karangi said that two soldiers have been sacked for looting stores during the massacre, with a third under investigation.
Shop owners — including a top end jewelery store as well as others selling mobile telephones, watches, cameras, expensive suits and lingerie — said their stores were completely looted.
“The allegations of KDF (Kenya Defense Force) soldiers looting are very serious and we have undertaken to carry out a thorough investigation,” Karangi told reporters.
Top Shabab militant killed
A top suicide bomb-maker for Somalia’s Shabab rebels has been killed in a drone strike, government officials said Tuesday after the latest attack by US forces against the Al-Qaeda-linked group.
Residents near the site of the strike in southern Somalia reported at least three people were in the charred vehicle, which burst into flames shortly after the sound of an aircraft was heard overheard.
Somali Interior Minister Abdikarin Hussein Guled told government radio that his intelligence services had been tracking Ibrahim Ali Abdi, also known as Anta-Anta, for some time before the strike took place on Monday.
“The operation in which this man has been killed was very important for the government. This man had a major role in the death of many innocent civilians and his death will help in bringing back peace,” the minister told Radio Mogadishu.
The minister did not say who carried out the drone attack, but an official in Washington said the US military was responsible.
Kenya police hold five over Westgate massacre
