Mr Calistus Mashati Ngesa in a Nairobi Court Monday when he testified in a case against four terror suspects; Mohammed Abdi, Liban Omar, Adan Ibrahim and Hussein Mustafah over the Westgate Shopping Mall attack on September 21 last year which left 67 people dead. PHOTO/PAUL WAWERU NATION
By Vincent Agoya
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
One of the terrorists in the Westgate Shopping mall attack operated between Kampala and Nairobi from June 2013 to the day of the attack, a Nairobi court was told Monday.
The September 21, 2013, shooting left 67 people dead and more than 200 injured.
The attacker was also a pupil at a primary school in the country in 2010 before he “disappeared” and resurfaced 2013.
And, a day before the attack, he made calls from Busia and later travelled to Eastleigh in Nairobi, an investigator told the court.
Mr Mohammed Abdi Noor’s details were obtained from a cell-phone data transcript and at the school where he learnt up to Class Five, as a refugee in Dadaab in 2010 before his mother took him away to Somalia.
Noor is believed to have led the Westgate assailants and died in the rescue operation that followed, a witness testifying in a case where four people are charged with helping the terrorists carry out the attack said.
The attackers, the court heard, left behind five Sim card holders that helped form clues.
“I retrieved Sim card holders from the car that ferried the terrorists to Westgate, and an analysis indicated four phone numbers had been in use,” Inspector Newton Mwiti of Anti-terrorism Police Unit said.
He said one of the numbers had been used both at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and Entebbe on June 17, 2013.
“It indicated that the user had arrived at JKIA and was on transit...he had also used it in Turkana, and I travelled to Kakuma to trace his details,” said Mr Mwiti.
The officer said that on arrival, he confirmed that the user was Mohammed Abdi Noor Said “who arrived in Kenya in January 2010 as a refugee in Dadaab and transferred immediately to Kakuma where was issued with a ration card and enrolled in Gambela Primary School within the refugee camp.”
The witness said Mr Noor did not proceed with his studies but “left for Somali and came back on June 17, 2013.”
Mr Mwiti said a call data report showed the phone number 0726658756 was active till September 22, 2013 “when it went off.”
Earlier, a survivor, Mr Calistus Ngesa recounted how he saw the attackers open fire on children who were participating in a cooking competition at the Mall.
A grenade hurled by the attackers blew off his toes and a bullet was also removed from his knee, he said.
The hearing continues Wednesday.