Four Somali nationals have been charged with aiding those who carried out September’s attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall.
Mohamed Ahmed Abdi, Liban Abdullah Omar, Hussein Hassan Mustafah, and Adan Dheq have been remanded to appear in court next week. Abdi, Omar and Mustafah are charged with knowingly supporting the attackers and entering Kenya illegally using false identification documents. Dheq is accused with harbouring a man authorities say is a senior leader of al-Shabab, which carried out the Westgate mall attack. None of the men are believed to have wielded guns during the attack, and all four deny the charges against them. They are due back in court on November 11.
The four gunmen who carried out the Westgate attack are understood to have died during the four-day siege. Police say Interpol is assisting them in trying to identify four bodies suspected to be the gunmen. Detectives are continuing to investigate a possible link to Norway, with Ndegwa Muhoro, head of Kenya’s Police Criminal Investigation Department, saying that a telephone call was made there during the attack. Norway’s PST intelligence agency has investigated claims that a Norwegian citizen of Somali origin planned the attack, but has declined to comment further.
At least 67 people died in the attack, which Somali group al-Shabab said it carried out in retaliation for Kenya’s deployment of troops in southern Somalia.
