The plot was hatched weeks or months ago on Somali soil, by the Shabab’s “external operations arm,” officials say. A team of English-speaking foreign fighters was carefully selected, along with a target: Nairobi’s gleaming Westgate mall. The building’s blueprints were studied, down to the ventilation ducts. The attack was rehearsed and the team dispatched, slipping undetected through Kenya’s porous borders, often patrolled by underpaid — and deeply corrupt — border guards. A day or two before the attack, powerful belt-fed machine guns were secretly stashed in a shop in the mall with the help of a colluding employee, officials say. At least one militant had even packed a change of clothes so he could slip out with fleeing civilians after the killings were done. The way the attack was carried out may have had something to do with the recent killing of Omar Hammami, a Shabab fighter who grew up in Alabama and became a phantomlike figure across the Somali deserts, known by his nom de guerre: Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, “the American.” Mr. Hammami was fatally shot by another wing of the Shabab less than two weeks ago. One reason for the rift was Mr. Hammami’s complaints that the Shabab had become too brutal toward fellow Muslims under the leadership of the group’s emir, Ahmed Abdi Godane. That brutality, Mr. Hammami said, was the reason the Shabab had become so unpopular in Somalia and lost so much territory recently.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 12:30:43 +0000
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