Norway Investigates Possible Assailant in Kenya Mall Siege
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Investigators are questioning relatives and friends of Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a Norwegian citizen born in Somalia, to try to determine whether he was one of the four militants captured on surveillance footage inside the shopping mall, calmly killing shoppers on a Saturday afternoon last month.
His sister, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that officers from the Norwegian security police had asked her whether her brother had placed calls from Nairobi, including from the Westgate shopping mall, during the siege. She said that he had not and that the family was unaware of any role he might have played in the attack.
“My mother and father and me, we don’t even know if he is dead or alive,” she said. “We are waiting for the whole issue to become clearer.”
A spokesman for the Norwegian Police Security Service, Martin Bernsen, said investigators were also unsure whether Mr. Dhuhulow was still alive. Several explosions and a fire at the mall have made it difficult to distinguish between the remains of the victims and attackers. The authorities have been unable thus far to identify any of the militants among the bodies pulled from the rubble.
A man with the same name as Mr. Dhuhulow was arrested in Somalia in connection with the murder of a radio journalist but was freed by a military tribunal for lack of evidence in March.
In 2009, Mr. Dhuhulow, 23, began going on what his sister called “long vacations” to Somalia. Contact with the family was sporadic and she could not remember whether she had last spoken to him last year or the year before. “My brother leads a different life than me,” she said.
A family member told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had called this summer and said he was in trouble.
The Norwegian Police Security Service said in a statement last week that it had received information that a Norwegian citizen of Somali origin may have been involved in “the planning and execution of the attack” in late September, when militants stormed the mall and killed more than 60 men, women and children. The Norwegians sent investigators to Nairobi to work with Kenyan security services on the investigation.
The Somali militant group the Shabab claimed responsibility. The Kenyan authorities initially said 10 to 15 assailants had been involved in the assault. Officials with knowledge of the investigation now say that the number was no more than six and may be as few as the four captured on the surveillance tapes.
Kenyan officials released four names, but none of them was Mr. Dhuhulow’s, and officials with knowledge of the investigation said later that they were believed to be noms de guerre and not birth names.
As recently as last week, investigators were still referring to the attackers as “pink shirt, white shirt, black shirt, blue shirt,” based on the clothes they were wearing in surveillance footage. Mr. Dhuhulow is believed to be the militant in the black shirt who was filmed in a grocery store, his left pant leg soaked in blood.
Norway has increasingly come into focus as investigators from Kenya, the United States, Norway and elsewhere work to try to piece together the Shabab’s international network. Navy SEALs staged an unsuccessful raid in the Somali coastal town of Baraawe earlier this month to try to capture a Shabab mastermind, Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, also known as Ikrima. Mr. Abdikadir is believed to have lived in Norway as an asylum seeker between 2004 and 2008.
“When we investigate one Norwegian involved, we are interested in his connections,” Mr. Bersen said.
More and more video footage of the attack has leaked out in the weeks since the siege ended. CNN released disturbing clips on Thursday that showed terrified shoppers running for their lives while the killers stalked them, leaving victims in pools of blood on the mall floor.
Henrik Pryser Libell reported from Larvik, Norway, and Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya.
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