Kenyan Foreign Minister Confirms Mall Attack Was By Al-Qaeda

[Peter Lemkin]

It's getting curioser and curioser:

MI5 was informed of plan to attack shopping centre FOUR years ago after British terror suspect was arrested in Kenya

Kenya had been warned of an Al Shabaab attack in late September
British citizen arrested four years ago questioned about similar attack
Bilal Berjawi accused of planning to blow up Israeli-owned supermarket
The Westgate Mall, where at least 67 people died, is Israeli-owned


By BARBARA JONES and IAN GALLAGHER
PUBLISHED: 00:48, 29 September 2013 | UPDATED: 10:20, 29 September 2013

A commander of the terrorist group behind the Nairobi attack was questioned by MI5 over plans to blow up a Kenyan shopping centre four years ago.


Bilal Berjawi, then a British citizen, was arrested in Kenya by counter-terrorism officers who claimed to be working on instructions from MI5.


Berjawi, who also went by the name Abu Omar, was questioned again on his return to Britain by the Security Service. At the time, he was a secret member of Al Shabaab, but MI5 and the Kenyans accused him of being a member of Al Qaeda.




According to his account, he was held in Nairobi for four days by Kenyan officers who were fed questions by MI5.
They accused him of planning to blow up an Israeli-owned supermarket in an attack sanctioned by Osama bin Laden.


The Westgate Mall, which includes a large supermarket, is Israeli-owned. Berjawi's account, if true, suggests a failure of intelligence by MI5 and the Kenyan authorities.
Security at the mall in the days leading up to the attack was lax, even despite the Kenyan authorities receiving more recent warnings of an imminent attack from the UN.
Berjawi's account was given to Cageprisoners, a British charity which campaigns against alleged mistreatment of terror suspects.


Berjawi, who is of Lebanese origin, went to Somalia and joined Al Shabaab in 2006. He returned to the UK a year later to raise funds for the terrorists.
He stayed at his family's council house in North Kensington, West London, before leaving for Kenya, where he was detained. He told Cageprisoners the Kenyans accused him of being an Al Qaeda suicide bomber who had trained in Afghanistan.
He was told: You were planning to attack a supermarket… an Israeli supermarket.' After four days, he was allowed to return to the UK, where he was met and questioned by MI5.
'He returned to Somalia in 2009 and rose to become a senior figure in the group Al Qaeda in East Africa, a radical part of Al Shabaab.
He was suspected of crossing into Uganda in 2010 where he took part in the Al Shabaab attacks at two bars as fans watched the World Cup final. The blasts killed 74.
He was stripped of his British citizenship and, according to Al Shabaab, was killed in January last year by a US drone missile.
Last night, MI5 would not say whether it knew of an attack on Westgate Mall four years ago, but a security source said: There is often terrorist chatter about targets for spectacular attacks and over the years the same targets pop up.'

Yes, Dave, but that was four long years ago...and they likely forgot!:: i.e. an oversight. ::face.palm::

It seems to me that the strategy of tension to give 'rationale' for wars and imperialist expansion, control of resources and populations, et al., while not new, are really all the rage these halcyon days.