Kenyan authorities had been warned about threat to buildings 'day before attacks'

[N.O.R.F]

A developing narrative. Will the Kenyan media delve into this as they should or will it be covered up?

 

Kenyan authorities had been warned about threat to buildings 'day before attacks'

 

Intelligence agents are said to have been in Westgate mall just hours before killings, as criticism over government grows

 

Kenyan authorities had intelligence pointing to an attack in Nairobi a day before the Westgate mall attack. According to counter-terrorism documents, the government and military were warned that al-Shabaab was planning an attack on the capital where it would storm a building and hold hostages.

 

There are also reports that Kenyan intelligence agents were at Westgate a few hours before the crowded shopping centre was struck by heavily armed terrorists last Saturday, in a four-day siege that left at least 67 people dead.

 

"We cannot say that this attack comes as a surprise," said Farah Maalim, former deputy speaker of the Kenyan National Assembly. "The possibility of something like this happening, and of failures in the Kenyan intelligence community, has worried us for years." Maalim added: "We have an intelligence service more worried about internal party politics than about threats to national security."

 

It was announced yesterday that a sixth Briton has died following the siege. The Foreign Office has said it cannot rule out the possibility of further casualties.

 

Kenya refuses to comment on reports of warnings prior to the attack, but officials say they are still investigating the relationship between the attackers and al-Shabaab's local offshoot, al-Hijra. In the past, Kenya's large Somali-Kenyan population has borne the brunt of suspicion for involvement in terrorism, but sources say that the authorities are now focusing investigations on ethnic Kenyan converts to Islam for suspected links in the Westgate attack. One young convert was arrested and allegedly tortured last week, say human rights groups, for his suspected role in al-Hijra and Westgate. Allegations of human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings by the Kenyan authorities have gone hand in hand with their continuing investigations into al-Shabaab and al-Hijra networks in Kenya.

 

Terrorist activity in cells in cities such as Nairobi and Mombasa has led to a spate of arrests – including the warrant for the arrest of British woman Samantha Lewthwaite – and what are believed to be assassinations after senior figures such as Aboud Rogo Mohammed, a former leader of al-Hijra, have been killed in unexplained circumstances.

 

Experts say that, as al-Shabaab has been weakened in Somalia, it has focused more and more on Kenya and its al-Hijra cell. In a report earlier this year, the United Nations group of experts that monitors the activities of al-Shabaab points to the appointment of a new leader for the group in Kenya last year, Sheikh Ahmad Iman Ali, as the impetus for a wave of grenade attacks and improvised explosive device explosions in Kenya, which have killed scores in recent months.

 

The report also warns that al-Hijra was planning large-scale attacks such as the one on the Westgate mall. "Al-Shabaab no longer recruits young Somali men to carry out dirty work for them," said Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, a Somali-Kenyan Horn of Africa specialist at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. "Now they have got members from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, even Comoros – these are the ones carrying out attacks."

 

The diverse nature of al-Shabaab recruits is backed up by the group's own online propaganda. One photo, published on a pro-al-Shabaab website this year, shows light-skinned and at least one apparently white recruit in desert military uniform during a parade. The site claims that the images were taken at Barawe, a port in south-eastern Somalia where the Kenyan-born suspected al-Qaida operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was killed in a US military raid in 2009.

 

"Al-Shabaab is getting global support. It does not belong to Somalis any more. They have a strong network, and they are going from China to Chile, from Khartoum to Canada," said Abdisamad. "They want to Islamise the whole world, they have a global agenda and are getting advice and recruits from everywhere."

 

Yet despite widespread knowledge of the activities of al-Hijra, little has ostensibly been done to disrupt the group. "There are reasons why you don't just smash these networks up," said an international intelligence source. "You have to be very surgical in the way that you take it apart, with targeted prosecutions or assassinations."

 

Some have speculated that Kenya lacks any serious intent to disrupt al-Shabaab. "If we wanted to eliminate al-Shabaab in Somalia, we could do it in less than three months. But it seems we decided we didn't want to eliminate them completely because then we would have no legitimacy for being in Somalia," said Maalim. "Somalia is a cash cow for all the countries in the region," Maalim added. "It's a free-for-all. And in Kenya the terrorist attack seems a source of celebration for some – now we can challenge the international criminal court, we receive equipment and arms from the US and other allies, we can get the aid money flowing."

 

Kenya's counter-terrorism and intelligence strategy will come under increasing scrutiny as details continue to emerge from the rubble of the Westgate shopping centre, where an unknown number of bodies still lie buried after a large part of the structure collapsed. Seventy-one people are still missing, and no bodies have yet been recovered.

 

"Five suspected terrorists were killed during the operation and the ongoing forensic investigations will ascertain their identities," said the Kenyan government. "These investigations will answer the questions being raised about their nationalities and gender."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/28/kenya-authorities-warned-of-attack

[tutu]

Kenya's media were the first ones to report.

 

Four Cabinet Secretaries and the Kenya Defence Force boss were warned that al-Shabaab terrorists were planning a Mumbai-style attack in Nairobi, where they would storm a building and hold hostages.

 

The warnings started in January and increased early this month when the Cabinet Secretaries, who are members of the National Security Council, were told of plans to cause mayhem in Nairobi and Mombasa on September 13 and 20.

 

According to counter-terrorism reports seen by the Saturday Nation, Cabinet Secretaries Julius Rotich (Treasury), Joseph ole Lenku (Interior), Amina Mohammed (Foreign Affairs), Raychelle Omamo (Defence) and KDF boss General Julius Karangi were alerted on the impending attacks. The report said terrorists planned to storm a building with guns and grenades and “probably hold hostages”.

http://www.nation.co.ke/news/Did-Karangi-ministers-ignore-terror-warning/-/1056/2010420/-/b7sfagz/-/index.html

 

And now the media hot on the heels of some ministers and security officials.

 

Did the masterminds of the Westgate terror escape within an hour of launching the attack? Could the terrorists who remained behind to continue the senseless killing and repulse security forces also slip away unnoticed?

 

And what is the fate of the hostages thought to have been held in the siege? What about the destruction of the mall, did the military bomb it? And who looted the shops?

 

These are some of the hard questions that Kenyans are seeking answers to as sources reveal new accounts that have not been formally released by the government, further intensifying the mystery that surrounds the four-day siege.

http://www.nation.co.ke/news/Hard-questions-emerge-over-handling-of-terror-attack/-/1056/2011514/-/4wf74hz/-/index.html

[N.O.R.F]

It will all come out in the wash. The sooner the better.

[nuune]

^^ How on earth a reshuffle will improve Kenya's intelligence service!

[nuune]

Whether you reshuffle them or not doesn't make any difference, they will not be better than the current one's.

 

Waddanka dhan musuqmaasuq baa silciyey, so as Somalia too, but Kenya is different because here we are talking about a country with armed forces and enjoys international engagement, but also enjoys corruption, even kuwii weerarkan sanad ka hor loo sheegay iney qaateen laaluush ayaan ku oran karaa oo la dhahey iska dhaafa waa intaas oon ka helnaa weerarka magac oo adduunka nagu taageero Obamana nagu soo booqdo wadanka illeen 3 sano iyo waxbaa u harey walina lugta Kenya ma uusan dhigin.

[QansaxMeygaag]

^^

When you have people sent to save hostages looting jewellery, where do you turn to for solution? A lot of property was looted by the so-called saviors

[nuune]

^ That I was expecting since I haven't seen or read about anyone mentioning about how the saviours looted jewelers and anything valuable they could see, I bet when CCTV records are made available to public which I doubt, many police officers would get the sack, but hell no, they will be sent to another place of locality, maybe Garissa or Nakuru.

[tutu]

QansaxMeygaag;979923 wrote:

^^

When you have people sent to save hostages looting jewellery, where do you turn to for solution? A lot of property was looted by the so-called saviors

So you thought the saviours were angels as in the fairy tales! Do you expect a policeman earning £200 a month to spare chains worth thousands of pounds. C'mon even that don't happen in your happy-perfect West. As inhumane as it may seem, this is Africa.

 

 

Apophis;

Not so much as intelligence failure, but failure to act on that intelligence. Cabinet must be reshuffled asap (and the hotelier should be the first one to be sacked).

True. It was a matter of sidelining the intelligence bodies. And thats what the parliamentary group will be grilling some security officials and ministers about later this week. As you said, many are recommending Mr. Ole Lenku to leave the security docket. The guy is as clueless as a hotelier will be in security matters.