Kenyan Authorities Had Been Warned About Threat to Buildings ‘Day Before Attacks’

Kenyan authorities had intelligence pointing to an attack in Nairobi a day before the Westgate mall attack. According to counter-terrorism documents, the government and military were warned that al-Shabaab was planning an attack on the capital where it would storm a building and hold hostages.

There are also reports that Kenyan intelligence agents were at Westgate a few hours before the crowded shopping centre was struck by heavily armed terrorists last Saturday, in a four-day siege that left at least 67 people dead.

“We cannot say that this attack comes as a surprise,” said Farah Maalim, former deputy speaker of the Kenyan National Assembly. “The possibility of something like this happening, and of failures in the Kenyan intelligence community, has worried us for years.” Maalim added: “We have an intelligence service more worried about internal party politics than about threats to national security.”

It was announced yesterday that a sixth Briton has died following the siege. The Foreign Office has said it cannot rule out the possibility of further casualties.

Kenya refuses to comment on reports of warnings prior to the attack, but officials say they are still investigating the relationship between the attackers and al-Shabaab’s local offshoot, al-Hijra. In the past, Kenya’s large Somali-Kenyan population has borne the brunt of suspicion for involvement in terrorism, but sources say that the authorities are now focusing investigations on ethnic Kenyan converts to Islam for suspected links in the Westgate attack. One young convert was arrested and allegedly tortured last week, say human rights groups, for his suspected role in al-Hijra and Westgate. Allegations of human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings by the Kenyan authorities have gone hand in hand with their continuing investigations into al-Shabaab and al-Hijra networks in Kenya.

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