Trail of Kenyan mall attack leads investigators to Norway
Norwegian police have been questioning friends and family of a Somalia-born Norwegian citizen who they suspect may be one of the gunmen behind last month's terrorist attack in Nairobi.
Norwegian police have been questioning friends and family of a Somalia-born Norwegian citizen who they suspect may be one of the gunmen behind last month's terrorist attack in Nairobi.
The tangled trail of last month's terrorist attack on a Kenyan shopping mall has led investigators more than 4,000 miles to the north in Norway, according to local police.
The New York Times reports that Norwegian police are investigating whether Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a Norwegian citizen born in Somalia, was one of at least four militants involved in the September attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that left more than 60 people dead. The police have been questioning friends and family of Mr. Dhuhulow.
According to his sister,聽Dhuhulow has been taking "long vacations" to Somalia 鈥� home of Al Shabab, the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the attack 鈥� since 2009. The Times adds that a man with the same name as Dhuhulow was arrested in Somalia in March in connection with the murder of a radio journalist, but was later released for lack of evidence.
Review of surveillance footage is helping to fill in some of the blanks surrounding the attack, which increasingly appears to have been committed by attackers who were chillingly calm at the time, reports CNN.
In addition to video evidence, authorities are sifting through physical evidence from the scene, including weapons and remains presumed to belong to attackers, writes the Associated Press.
But despite 鈥� or because of 鈥� the wealth of witnesses, physical evidence, and video documentation, many aspects of the massive mall attack remain mysterious to investigators. Agence France-Presse presents some of the remaining questions, including the final official death toll, the precise names of the attackers, and the possible involvement of British Muslim convert Samantha Lewthwaite, sometimes referred to as "the White Widow."
A recent Monitor story looked at Ms. Lewthwaite's involvement in a high-profile terror cell in Kenya and her links to a man that US Navy SEALs tried to capture in a raid in Somalia.
The impact of the Kenyan mall attack is resonating internationally in a variety of additional ways. Security in Uganda has been stepped up after the US warned of a terror threat similar to the mall attack, the BBC reported this week. A judge in California ruled in favor of a man that his ex-wife may not take their 19-month-old daughter to Kenya, the mother's home country, out of concerns of future terrorism. And the city of London has reviewed its security plan in the wake of the Kenya attack, reports the Evening Standard.