NAIROBI: Mannequins were stripped clean, jewelery cases smashed, racks of expensive suits carted off, dozens of cash registers cracked open and at least one member of the Kenyan security services arrested, caught with a bloody wallet.
The looting of the Westgate mall, the scene of a siege in which scores of people were killed last month, appeared to have the scope and organisation of a large-scale military operation, and many Kenyans are asking if that is what it was.
Four-day siege or four-day shopping spree?
From the first hours after Islamist militants burst into the mall on September 21, executing men, women and children, until a week later when shopkeepers were let back in to sweep up the broken glass, very few people were allowed inside the mall except the Kenyan security forces, mainly the army.
Jewellery which once decorated these mannequins has been taken.
More and more Kenyans believe those soldiers methodically cleaned out the mall, and that the barrages of gunfire ringing out for days were being directed not at the last of the militants but at safes and padlocks to blast them open. Some business leaders even question whether the Kenyan army deliberately prolonged the crisis by saying shooters were still in the building when they were actually dead, to give themselves extra time to steal.
Witnesses said that the most they saw militants loot was a couple cans of soda, and shopkeepers cited no instances of panicked shoppers helping themselves to merchandise as they ran for their lives, leading to the widespread conclusion that the security forces must have been involved.
Kenyans are accustomed to corruption - their country is consistently rated as one of the most corrupt in the world - but the evidence of looting amid a national tragedy has been too much for many to take.
The Kenyan military has said it is ‘‘committed to get to the bottom of this’’.
‘‘It’s disgraceful,’’ said Maina Kiai, one of Kenya’s best-known human rights defenders. ‘‘It’s part of a nasty culture where power means everything, where you take what you can, you do whatever you want, and there’s no accountability.’’
The Kenyan military said on Thursday that it was ‘‘committed to get to the bottom of this’’ and appealed to the public for any information about soldiers who may have looted.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced an official inquiry into the security services’ response, which has been roundly criticised as slow and bungled. But official inquiries often don’t amount to much, many Kenyans say.
‘‘Four-day siege or four-day shopping spree?’’ said one Western official working in Kenya.
Many questions are still swirling. Al-Shabab, a Somali Islamist group, has claimed responsibility for killing more than 60 people at the mall, but the number of militants who stormed in - and who they were - remain unknown.
On Thursday morning, at the Westgate entrance, vans usually used for taking tourists on safari disgorged a platoon of Western investigators wearing zip-off nylon pants and handguns on their hips. The mall reeked of rotten meat. Kenyan soldiers in hazardous material suits and gas masks leaned over piles of debris, collecting evidence. There were still pools of blood on the floor, bits of flesh sticking to the tiles. Several more bodies were unearthed on Thursday from a pile of rubble.
The mall’s electricity remained shut off, and inside Sir Henry’s, a men’s store on the ground floor, clerks took inventory by lantern light. Fazal Virani, one of Sir Henry’s owners, shook his head in disbelief. He pointed out that the cheaper suits in the front of the store had not been stolen, while dozens of his most expensive suits, hanging in the back and costing almost $US2000 ($A2130) each, were gone.
‘‘These guys had time, man, these guys had time,’’ he said.
Virani then trudged upstairs to commiserate with other shopkeepers.
‘‘You get hit, too?’’ he asked a group of men standing ankle deep in crushed glass.
‘‘Dumb question,’’ replied Michael Waweru, the owner of a small boutique. ‘‘Everyone got hit.’’
Laptops, smart phones, Swiss watches, cameras, underwear, perfume and stereo speakers were all carried out of the mall, which was supposed to be tightly guarded by the military, owners said. At the checkout booths in the Nakumatt supermarket, thieves left behind hundreds of coins on conveyor belts covered in ash. Wallets were snatched from the bodies of victims, shopkeepers said, complicating the process of identification.
In one women’s boutique, blouses, jewellery and purses were snatched, leaving naked plastic mannequins. Even the little wooden carts that sold chocolates on Westgate’s ground floor had been broken into.
‘‘Who did this?’’ said Atul Shah, Nakumatt’s managing director. ‘‘The people inside. Who was inside? The defence forces.’’
A clean-up crew at one restaurant said that when the soldiers allowed them back in on Monday, the crew found hundreds of bottles of gin, brandy, rum, vodka and beer sitting on the bar. It looked like the scene of a fraternity party, one Western official said.
‘‘I don’t know if they are deprived of these things or they felt they deserved them,’’ said Zahir Manji, who owns four shops in Westgate.
Inside the mall this week, the evidence of widespread theft was all around. Parking machines and cash registers were pried open and emptied. A huge, mounted flat-screen television had been lifted off the wall. Doors were wrenched open, and in several stores that showed no obvious signs of having been caught up in the fighting, display cases were ransacked.
Witness accounts have not suggested that the attackers broke into safes or stole anything of value. The mall’s surveillance cameras may have captured some of the looting, but Kenyan intelligence agents have taken the footage.
‘‘A committee of inquiry will be formed,’’ Shah said, sighing, ‘‘and nothing will happen’’.
Of Kenya’s security services, the military had been considered the most professional, and the police force the most corrupt. But in the aftermath of the mall attack, it is the police officers who are being hailed as heroes, because dozens of lightly armed off-duty officers were among the first responders to the mall, and they saved hundreds of lives.
Within hours, the Kenyan military ordered the police out. Then the army took over. Scores of soldiers poured into the mall while several assailants holed up in the Nakumatt store. The stand-off ended three days later after soldiers fired an antitank missile into the store, leaving it in flames and opening an enormous crater in the flagship of one of Kenya’s most important companies.
Four days after that, the first shopkeepers were allowed back in to survey the wreckage. Millions of dollars of property had been destroyed, and businesses said that at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise were missing.
On Thursday, the talk among a group of forlorn shopkeepers was of ‘‘terrorism insurance’’. Nobody there had it. But Manji hoped that would not matter.
’’This was not terrorism, this was looting,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s sad that the people who were supposed to protect us have robbed us.’’
Two weeks after terrorists stormed the upmarket Westgate Shopping Mall and killed scores of people, there are still many unanswered questions.
And although the mystery has contined to deepen, with authorities issue conflicting statements, The Standard has established that lack of a unified command between the specialised Recce unit of the General Service Unit (GSU) and the army resulted in total confusion.
At some point, the Recce unit was ordered to leave and hand over to the military, but not before losing at least one member to “friendly fire”. It is also not clear if they had time to share valuable intelligence with the military.
It is also unclear why an army unit that lacks training in urban warfare, hostage rescue and counter terrorism was rushed to the site, complete with armoured personnel carriers and rocket propelled grenades powerful enough to bring down a building, but without intelligence.
The latest suggestion by Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo that gunmen who attacked the shopping complex were probably between four and six added to the twist.
President Uhuru Kenyatta and Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku had persistently put the figure at between 10 and 15, with reports that five attackers were killed as security forces broke the four-day deadly siege.
Their identities and the whereabouts of their bodies, including the lone gunman police claimed was arrested but died in custody while undergoing treatment, are unknown.
A Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldier who was in action at the mall suggested that even the Special Forces units that would have taken out the attackers weren’t certain that they had killed them.
On Monday, September 23, on the night the final assault to secure the shopping complex was executed, the soldier reported discussions among the units thus:
“Where are the bodies? If they are there, we too have not seen them, or they are probably buried in the rubble.”
As a pointer that the public might have been led to believe more than meets the eye, the soldier remarked: “On Monday morning, we (soldiers) watched the news amused. Where were you getting these reports?”
Reports indicate the building might have collapsed on Monday afternoon apparently after heavy explosions. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky amid bursts of gunfire as two helicopters flew low over the building.
The soldier who spoke to The Standard on condition of anonymity claimed security forces relied on an incomplete plan of the complex in the early stages of the operation.
The initial building’s blueprints that security forces obtained did not show an underground tunnel now feared to have offered an escape route for some terrorists, the KDF soldier claimed.
The soldier was among the evacuation team that attended to the injured KDF Special Forces.
The soldier, who asked not to be named as he is not authorised to comment on the matter, said they were not even aware of the tunnel said to run under the building until a blast whose origin is also a mystery, collapsed part of the mall.
There are claims that some of the terrorists behind the massacre might have escaped capture by fleeing like “sewer rats” through the tunnel.
Mobile phone video footage from one of the soldiers shows blurred images of the charred aftermath of the attack.
At one point, the soldiers speak in hushed tones and one wonders aloud in Kiswahili; “Walitoroka?” (Did they flee?) The reply is inaudible.
Sources from the Westgate security team manning the area after the attack claimed some of the terrorists might have used the air vent ducts in the building to move from one point of the building to another, making it difficult for security forces to mark their exact location.
There is speculation that they might have used the same vents to move to a part of the building where they made their escape. A witness has also claimed he saw one of the attackers change his clothes and file out of the building alongside terrified victims rescued by police officers. So how many may have escaped?
This is among many questions that have lingered since the evening of Tuesday, September 24, when President Kenyatta announced that the KDF had taken over the entire building.
In the televised address, the President reported that 61 civilians had been killed alongside six security men, and 167 injured. Eleven suspects were in custody, he added.
The Red Cross reported 69 dead. Their number of those missing, however, raised fears that the death toll was much higher, but the figure has since been revised downwards from 67 to 28. Authorities have been guarded about the list, raising eyebrows.
In addition, officials are yet to revise the casualties although media reports quoting military and Red Cross sources have reported at least nine bodies being pulled out of the rubble. Soldiers taking part in the search mission fear there are still bodies in the rubble, citing the stench of rotting human flesh. So just how many people were killed in the terrorist attack?
The Kenya Defence Forces KDF is in the eye of a storm as more claims emerge of serious misconduct by soldiers deployed to help out with reclaiming the Westgate Mall from terrorists last week. The Defence Ministry on Thursday broke its silence over alleged looting by soldiers, with Defence Secretary Raychelle Omamo appealing for information and evidence that will enable KDF take disciplinary action against anyone found guilty.
Soldiers who may have looted shops at the Westgate mall following the recent terrorist attack risk 10 years in prison.
National Assembly committees investigating the attack and other related incidents is already pushing for action to be taken against any officer found guilty following complaints from shop owners.
The matter came up during Thursday’s deliberations by members of the Defence and Security committees, who have joined forces to inquire into security lapses that may have made it easy for the terrorists to strike.
MPs in the committees want a scrutiny of closed circuit television footage (CCTV) in the mall.
They have also proposed forensic examination of devices, including ATMs.
The MPs have promised to submit a report within 30 days. The investigation starts on Monday.
Already, three people have volunteered information to the parliamentary teams and are set to appear before them on Monday.
Other people willing to help in the investigation have been asked to submit memoranda to the committees through the Clerk of the National Assembly.
Nairobi Senator Mike Mbuvi Sonko will meet the committee on Monday.
Mr Mbuvi has said he has information that could help unravel the attack.
Meanwhile, the US says it is helping Kenyan security personnel to try and identify the attackers.
In an online Press conference hosted by the US State Department, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Linda Thomas Greenfield said FBI agents are in Nairobi assisting and providing investigations support “but at this juncture we are yet to get the identity of the attackers. When that is done, it will be made known,” Ms Greenfield said.
She said the US would enhance support for the Kenyan people to ensure the perpetrators of the terror attack are unearthed.
“We are putting a lot of resources in Africa to support the war against terrorism. If there is anything America can do to stop terrorism we will do it,” the US official said.
The American Intelligence believe the executors of the horrendous attack at the Westgate Mall sneaked in their powerful belt fed machineguns into a shop inside the Mall two days before the attack. The US press has reported that corrupt Kenyan security officers may have facilitated the entry of deadly weapons used in the attack.
“Intelligence analysts say this may mean the militants acquired their weapons from corrupt Kenyan officers who are known to sell or rent out their guns charging as little as few dollars an hour,” the New York Times reported.
In Uganda a wanted terrorist Mueller alias Ahmed Khaled has caused a star in the country after intelligence circulated information that he sneaked into Uganda on Monday through Busia border.
The Uganda police boss Gen. Kale Kayihura said the suspect travelled to Uganda by bus and dropped off along Jinja road.
Gen Kayihura asked Ugandans to be on high alert as police launched a manhunt for the suspect.
Meanwhile, the military has defended its participation and conduct during the recent Westgate rescue operation. This follows claims that some of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers behaved unprofessionally, and even looted, during the four-day operation that also claimed the lives of at least five soldiers and a General Service Unit (GSU) officer.
Ministry of Defence Cabinet Secretary Raychelle Omamo yesterday said that although internal operations were a preserve of the Interior ministry, the KDF had a role to play in internal operations, saying the Constitution obliged them to assist and cooperate with other authorities in situations of emergencies and disasters.
“The terror attack at the Westgate Mall was one such situation that necessitated KDF action in internal operations,” she said.
Amb. Omamo has however also warned that all soldiers found culpable would be dealt with firmly in accordance with the law, saying that the ministry was committed to getting to the bottom of the matter. “Let it be known to the Kenyan people and the international community that KDF operational training and doctrine do not condone any unprofessional misconduct.
She refuted claims that the KDF was a sole entity in the Westgate operation, adding that that was a multi-agency operation which involved collective decision making.
“The KDF’s conduct inside the mall was guided by International Standard Operating Procedures that govern missions of such nature. In line with KDF training, great care and caution was exercised as is required with such delicate hostage situations,” she said.
The minister appealed for public participation in availing concrete information and evidence that would implicate the soldiers, and assured the public that all information presented would be treated with utmost confidentiality. The Defence headquarters has also given contacts (publicaffairs@mod.go.ke, 0726419706) for members of the public to share information.
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