Dusit attack linked to foiled attack on KICC, Parliament, court told

 

Journalists join efforts to evacuate survivors who were injured in the Dusit D2 terror attack in 2029. [File, Standard]

An investigator has linked the Dusit D2 terror attack to a foiled attack on the Kenyatta International Conference Centre and Parliament.

While testifying in a case where Mire Abdulahi Ali, Hussein Mohamed Abdile and Mohamed Abdi Ali are accused of aiding the 2015 Dusit D2 terror attack, Chief Inspector Joseph Kolum told High Court Judge Diana Kavedza that scrutiny of a Facebook account under the names Mohammed Yare and Simple Wes indicated plans for attacks on KICC and Parliament.

Abdile’s number featured in a conversation between Wes and Adamu Chege. Meanwhile, Chege said to be the mastermind and facilitator of the attack, was found to have communicated with Prince Hamed on Facebook. The investigator testified that Hamed was Abdile.

According to the officer, Hamed was responsible for arranging travel documents for a terrorist named Siyat Omar, who was to make his way to Kenya. The officer stated that the plan involved creating a student identification card for Arabia Boys Secondary School, which was to be used for travel.

“The report submitted by our analysts shows the photographs of the terrorists and the photo procured by the second accused matched the photo of Siyat Omar provided by Adam Chege through Facebook. This confirms that he was involved in identifying the school. The second accused was tasked with obtaining the ID of Arabia, the position of the picture, and the ID number through Facebook,” said Kolum.

Kolum claimed that Hamed provided details on how the ID should look. The person tasked with carrying out the KICC attack, the court heard, was one Victor Odede.

Odede, a boda boda rider, was jailed last year. He was accused of conspiring, on January 23, 2019, with others, including Mohamed Yare Abdalla (who was outside Kenya), to commit a terrorist act at KICC.

Abdille Ali  and Mire Abdullahi who are among three suspects in the2019 DusitD2 complex attack  at Kahawa law courts on November 07, 2022. [Collins Kweyu, Standard]

Detectives unearthed the entire plot from Facebook accounts “Kim Sam,” “Abdul Hakim,” “Kezia Soze,” “Mohamed Yare Abdalla,” and “Soze Kezia.”

The court heard that Odede was instructed by Yare via Facebook to ride a motorcycle from Nairobi to Moyale to collect information on number of roadblocks and kind of searches police were conducting. He was also tasked with riding a bus to perform a similar reconnaissance exercise.

Two people were arrested by police in Merti, Isiolo County, after the vehicle they were in was found to be strapped with explosives. This vehicle was to be driven into KICC for the attack.

Yesterday, Lawyer Chacha Mwita asked the Anti-Terror Police Unit (ATPU) officer whether claims about the Dusit attack, KICC, and Parliament plots were made for the gallery and media.

However, the officer maintained that the Facebook accounts linked the three. “That confirms, in computer science, that the device used to register the Facebook username Prince Hamed confirms that Prince Hamed is none other than the second accused,” he said.

At the same time, the court heard that Dusit D2 terror attack mastermind Ali Salim Gichunge told his wife, Violet Kemunto, to tell people he was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Justice Kavedza heard that the two were communicating a day before he, along with other terrorists, attacked the high-end hotel in Nairobi.

Kolum testified that when the two were communicating, Kemunto was on her way to Somalia, and he had promised to send her a last batch of personal items. This conversation was extracted from mobile phones exploited by the senior police officer.

The two addressed each other by the pet name “babe.”

“Babe, unajua naenda majuu leo, uko mteja. (My love, you know I am going abroad today. You are offline. This is not fair),” wrote Kemunto.

Gichunge replied: “Mambo babe, hope uko poa (How are you, my love). Babe, switch smartphones. Utaambia nini watu? (What will you tell the people?) Niko Addis (I am in Addis).”

The officer said they were using coded language, asserting that Kemunto was on her way to the Horn of Africa based on their conversation.

“Based on the original report, the conversation spans pages three to five. They were using coded words, such as ‘naenda majuu.’ From the conversation, the movement was Nairobi to Mandera, towards ‘majuu,’” said Kolum.

He stated that Kemunto and Gichunge were identified through the mobile numbers and phones they used.

Asked by Senior Principal Prosecution Counsel Duncan Ondimu whether his documents showed the two communicating, he replied in the affirmative.

The court also heard that Gichunge had registered at least 11 lines.

Besides the lines, there were mobile phones exploited to piece together the events of the attack, which occurred on January 15 and 16, 2019.

The first item was a Nokia 1030 mobile phone. He said the phone was solely used to transact money. According to him, Gichunge used aliases such as Eric Kinyanjui Munyi, Eric Kinyanjui, or Farouk. “It appears the phone was dedicated for M-Pesa transactions only,” said Kolum.

He said the mobile phone was recovered from a house in Muchatha, Kiambu County, where Gichunge had been residing.

The second phone, a Nokia 1010, was also without a SIM card. It was recovered from vehicle KCN 340E, which was used by terrorists to enter the hotel.

According to the witness, Gichunge used the phone to chat with Kemunto a day before the attack. The phone also had a balance of Sh59,700, which the sender, Gichunge, had transferred to himself.

Images of Dusit D2hotel terrorist attack victims are seen at the altar of the Assumption Cathedral, Bangkok, Thailand during a memorial service for victims of the Kenya attack on January 23, 2019. [File, Standard]

The investigator testified that a look at the phone’s IMEI number indicated it was generic.

He said the planners and executors of the Dusit attack communicated with many others. When asked whether he had read a statement by the landlady who rented the house to Gichunge, he said no.

Asked if it is a criminal offense to house or host a terrorist, he replied affirmatively. However, he noted that the house owner had no intention or awareness that her tenants were terrorists.

In Kenya, Gichunge communicated with Jilib through internet bundles from local telecom companies. However, Kolum asserted that the telecom companies were not involved in planning or aiding the attack.

“Everyone has the freedom to live so long as they abide by the law of the country,” said Kolum.

He said he was unaware whether Gichunge communicated with the three accused persons.

“I was assigned this matter, and my role was to extract information from the exhibits submitted to us relating to the first, second, and third accused persons and the terrorists who attacked the Dusit D2 hotel,” he said.