Investigators: Terrorists may have set a number of explosives in Westgate

By NYAMBEGA GISESA

Nairobi, Kenya: The question that remains unanswered and mysterious is, how did the Westgate Mall attackers exit on the Saturday night? Investigators are pursuing various theories, chief among them if the terrorists made exit through the same route used to rescue those they had taken hostage.

What the CCTV recording in the Nakumatt Supermarket area shows minutes and hours after 11pm on the day of attack has no single image of the terrorists exiting. According to investigators, if the terrorists left the mall after 10.54pm, they had two possible routes out.

First option: They would have walked past the loading area, accessed the basement parking lot, which was yet to be secured by security agencies and then left through Peponi Road where journalists, medical teams and public would have made perfect cover for them.

Second option: They could have taken the same route into the basement, exited to the right towards the main security gate where the military was stationed. This would be highly unlikely.

On Sunday morning, the world woke up with the same script- the mall was under siege. By 10 in the morning, Government made the first in what later became a series of contradictions.

“There are between 10 and 15 terrorists, one has been injured and taken to hospital,” Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku said in a press conference that morning. The CCTV footage shows the contrary.

Injured ‘terrorist’

He also spoke of an injured “terrorist” receiving treatment. But this later emerged to be a Mr Ali Gitonga, a driver who had taken his employer’s children to the mall. “I woke up at Moi Forces Memorial Hospital,” Gitonga recalled to us. “ I had been hit by a bullet and the first thing I said was Allah Rassulillah.”

Another contradiction was that the terrorists were holding hostages. The CCTV footage shows there were no hostages. The terrorists, it seems from the beginning, were not after a hostage crisis but on a killing mission.

In the following hours, the world was made to believe that KDF had the terrorists pinned down in one area of the mall. If this was true, then most likely the gunfight would have taken place inside the Nakumatt Supermarket and not outside the mall. Inside the mall, the images in our possession show a group of soldiers filing into the mall, guns ready, except for one who waves to someone inside the supermarket.

The soldiers enter the supermarket and a few minutes later they file out carrying bulging Nakumatt paper bags. Others then move to a mobile money stand and continue with their looting mission. A braver one, remains behind, picks more items and then walks out of the store. If this was the scene of heavy gunfire, how could have the soldiers carrying unknown items in shopping paper bags have behaved? We sought to find the answers to this question from the Public Affairs Office of the Department of Defence. To date they are yet to respond. However, this week the National Security Chairman, Asman Kamama, and his Defence and Foreign Relations counterpart, Ndungu Githinji, defended the military.

“We want to confirm to the media and Kenyans that from what we have seen, no officer from KDF looted as alleged and we want to appeal to Kenyans in the social media to desist from besmirching and maligning the name of KDF,” Kamama said.

Reviewing the footage

We sought further answers by reviewing the footage but now looking at what happened on Monday, September 23, another pivotal day in the four days of the siege. On Saturday evening, a KDF unit carried out a sweep at Erita Jewellers after the evacuation of shoppers.

One of the soldiers from the unit hung back, stepped into the store once again, took a look around and then left.

Come Monday, another soldier stepped into the store, took more time looking through before leaving a few minutes later. The Erita Jewellery cameras picked no further action until 11.00am that day when the lights went out, according to our source.

This would also be the last time that CCTV footage in the mall would be recorded. Another subject that became the focus of debate was the 36 seconds of video recorded from Art Café, showing empty bottles of beer at an outlet that did not stock alcohol. Who drank and brought the bottles of beer at Art Café?

At least until Monday, CCTV footage shows that Erita Jewellers Store and its contents were intact. The only people who accessed the store from Saturday to Monday, 11am according to the footage, were KDF men.

After the end of the siege, the owners and employees of Erita Jewellery were among the first to be allowed into the mall, on the morning of Thursday, September 25. They found jewellery boxes strewn everywhere and their displays broken with the most expensive items gone. The owners of the store claim that their losses are close to Sh50 million.

Another troubling question is who caused the fire that burnt most parts of the Nakumatt Supermarket, and so the mall caved in?

Start of the fire

The fire started not long after lights in the mall went out in the afternoon of Monday. Soon after, at about 12.45pm there was a series of gunshots followed by explosions. This was followed by dark, thick plumes of smoke rising from the rear area of the mall.

“The terrorists started fire using mattresses,” Interior Secretary Ole Lenku declared to the media. A close look of footage obtained from the air reveals that the large amber flames were coming from the ground floor of the mall, where the supermarket is situated. Two weeks later, Nakumatt CEO Atul Shah told us “Everything is ash….” in that part of the supermarket. “We want to know who it was that set the place on fire,” he added.

Forensic investigators are pursuing the theory that the terrorists may have set a number of explosives to detonate within the mall.

This could have resulted in weakening of the columns holding up the ceiling. Another theory is that Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) might have started the fire. From the footage we have seen, the terrorists only had AK47s and hand grenades, no RPGs.

Evidently, Kenya was changed on the day that terrorists laid siege to the Westgate Shopping Mall not just on the lives lost but more importantly on to what extent should citizens trust the government.