Journal connects Britain's "White Widow" to al Shabaab terror group

A Kenyan intelligence report and excerpts from the personal journal of a suspected terrorist known as the "White Widow," reveal new details about the inner workings of the al Shabaab terror network, which masterminded last month's deadly attack on a Nairobi mall.

Sky News obtained the 35-page report, which indicates that "White Widow" Samantha Lewthwaite is a central figure in al Shabaab, plotting several terror attacks across Kenya. 

The British Lewthwaite, 29, is called the "White Widow" because she was married to one of the suicide attackers responsible for the deadly bombings on a London subway and bus in 2005 that killed 52 people and injured 700 more.

The report also indicates the group was apparently planning multiple attacks targeting Kenyan parliament buildings, UN offices in Nairobi, restaurants and a series of assassinations focusing on senior politicians within Kenya.

The intelligence report provides a detailed breakdown of how the terror network operates throughout Africa, with recruits and cells working in a range of countries including Tanzania, Mali, South Africa, Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, and Zambia, as well as efforts in Pakistan and Yemen.

Al Shabaab's stronghold and focus is in Kenya with major bases in the capital Nairobi, and Mombasa, the report suggests. 

The report is damaging for Kenyan authorities because it suggests there were clear warnings up to eight months ago that a "Mumbai-style attack" was being planned in Nairobi on the Westgate shopping mall.

Fox News

The White Widow has taunted UK authorities for the past eight years -But hopefully soon it will come back to bite her

Evil

As Britain's most wanted woman, Samantha Lewthwaite, has managed to avoid capture for the past eight years while raising her state funded children to become terrorists.

Inspired by her 7/7 bomber husband, the White Widow has taunted UK authorities while reportedly continuing to carry out where his cowardice acts left off.

She has been linked to the plot which culminated in the death of 67 people after terror group, Al Shabaab, stormed a Kenyan shopping mall killing discriminately as they went.

Whereas before she was allegedly behind several grenade attacks on non Muslim places of worship and a bar in Mombasa, the recent attack in Nairobi brought Lewthwaite to international attention.

No longer was she just Britain's most wanted, she became the world's, but possibly more crucially America's, number one female target.

The attack on the Westgate mall, which she allegedly orchestrated, led to the deaths of several US citizens, a move that countless al-Qaeda terrorists have paid for with their lives.
Shortly Lewthwaite, 29, will move on the FBI's list of most wanted and in doing so attract a possible $5million bounty on her head.

For seven years, ever since 52 people lost their lives in the tragic London bombings, the mum-of-four has publicly protested her innocence.

In the immediate aftermath of 7/7 she was ashamedly paid a reported £30,000 by a newspaper to spew lie after lie about how she had been "tricked into his actions" by her bomber husband Jermaine Lindsay.

But this week, with the discovery of her Jihad diaries in Kenya in which she boasts about raising her children to one day become jihad martyrs, she found the infamy she so long craved.

But in doing so she also became hunted by the might of the American CIA, FBI and military.
The two raids over the weekend – capturing and killing terrorists by US Navy SEALS and Detla Force troops in Somalia and Libya – show America  remains extremely comfortable deploying special operations forces in countries the United States is not at war with.
America is also comfortable using drones over Lewthwaite’s African hideouts as it is over al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

No longer are the US prepared to sweep the White Widow’s conversion to Islam under the prayer mat.


Source of help 
Birmingham Mail 

The BBC just can't bring itsellf to accept and admit fact

In Western news-making and opinion-forming circles, there's a palpable reluctance to talk about the most noteworthy thing about modern Islamist violence: its barbarism, its graphic lack of moral restraint. This goes beyond the BBC's yellow reluctance to deploy the T-word - terrorism - in relation to the bloody assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya at the weekend. 

Across the commentating board, people are sheepish about pointing out the historically unique lunacy of Islamist violence and its utter detachment from any recognisable moral universe or human values. 
We have to talk about this barbarism; we have to appreciate how new and unusual it is, how different it is even from the terrorism of the 1970s or of the early twentieth century. 

We owe it to the victims of these assaults, and to the principle of honest and frank political debate, to face up to the unhinged, morally unanchored nature of Islamist violence in the 21st century.

Maybe it's because we have become so inured to Islamist terrorism in the 12 years since 9/11 that even something like the blowing-up of 85 Christians outside a church in Pakistan no longer shocks us or even makes it on to many newspaper front pages. 

But consider what happened: two men strapped with explosives walked into a group of men, women and children who were queuing for food and blew up themselves and the innocents gathered around them. 
Who does that? How far must a person have drifted from any basic system of moral values to behave in such an unrestrained and wicked fashion? Yet the Guardian tells us it is "moral masturbation" to express outrage over this attack, and it would be better to give into a "sober recognition that there are many bad things we can't as a matter of fact do much about". 

This is a demand that we further acclimatise to the peculiar and perverse bloody Islamist attacks around the world, shrug our shoulders, put away our moral compasses, and say: "Ah well, this kind of thing happens."

Or consider the attack on Westgate in Kenya, where both the old and the young, black and white, male and female were targeted. With no clear stated aims from the people who carried the attack out, and no logic to their strange and brutal behaviour, Westgate had more in common with those mass mall and school shootings that are occasionally carried out by disturbed people in the West than it did with the political violence of yesteryear.

 And yet still observers avoid using the T-word or the M-word (murder) to describe what happened there, and instead attach all sorts of made-up, see-through political theories to this rampage, giving what was effectively a terror tantrum executed by morally unrestrained Islamists the respectability of being a political protest of some breed.

Time and again, one reads about Islamist attacks that seem to defy not only the most basic of humanity's moral strictures but also political and even guerrilla logic. Consider the hundreds of suicide attacks that have taken place in Iraq in recent years, a great number of them against ordinary Iraqis, often children. 

Western apologists for this wave of weird violence, which they call "resistance", claim it is about fighting against the Western forces which were occupying Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion. If so, it's the first "resistance" in history whose prime targets have been civilians rather than security forces, and which has failed to put forward any kind of political programme that its violence is allegedly designed to achieve. 

Even experts in counterinsurgency have found themselves perplexed by the numerous nameless suicide assaults on massive numbers of civilians in post-war Iraq, and the fact that these violent actors, unlike the vast majority of violent political actors in history, have "developed no alternative government or political wing and displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern". 
One Iraqi attack has stuck in my mind for seven years. In 2006 a female suicide bomber blew herself up among families - including many mothers and their offspring - who were queuing up for kerosene. Can you imagine what happened?

A terrible glimpse was offered by this line in a Washington Post report on 24 September 2006:"Two pre-teen girls embraced each other as they burned to death."

What motivates this perversity? What are its origins? Unwilling, or perhaps unable, to face up to the newness of this unrestrained, aim-free, civilian-targeting violence, Western observers do all sorts of moral contortions in an effort to present such violence as run-of-the-mill or even possibly a justifiable response to Western militarism. 

Some say, "Well, America kills women and children too, in its drone attacks", wilfully overlooking the fact such people are not the targets of America's military interventions - and I say that as someone who has opposed every American venture overseas of the past 20 years. 
If you cannot see the difference between a drone strike that goes wrong and kills an entire family and a man who crashes his car into the middle of a group of children accepting sweets from a US soldier and them blows himself and them up - as happened in Iraq in 2005 - then there is something wrong with you. 

Other observers say that Islamists, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the individuals who attacked London and New York, are fighting against Western imperialism in Muslim lands. But that doesn't add up. 

How does blowing up Iraqi children represent a strike against American militarism? How is detonating a bomb on the London Underground a stab at the Foreign Office? It is ridiculous, and more than a little immoral, to try to dress up nihilistic assaults designed merely to kill as many ordinary people as possible as some kind of principled political violence.

We have a tendency to overlook the newness of modern Islamic terrorism, how recent is this emergence of a totally suicidal violence that revels in causing as many causalities as possible. Yes, terrorism has existed throughout the modern era, but not like this. Consider the newness of suicide attacks, of terrorists who destroy themselves as well as their surroundings and fellow citizens. 
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were an average of one or two suicide attacks a year. Across the whole world. Since the early and mid-2000sthere have been around 300 or 400 suicide attacks a year. In 2006 there were more suicide attacks around the world than had taken place in the entire 20 years previous. 

Terrorists' focus on killing civilians - the more the better - is also new. If you look at the 20 bloodiest terrorist attacks in human history, measured by the number of causalities they caused, you'll see something remarkable: 14 of them - 14 - took place in the 1990s and 2000s. So in terms of mass death and injury, those terrorist eras of the 1970s and 80s, and also earlier outbursts of anarchist terrorism, pale into insignificance when compared with the new, Islamist-leaning terrorism that has emerged in recent years.

What we have today, uniquely in human history, is a terrorism that seems myopically focused on killing as many people as possible and which has no clear political goals and no stated territorial aims. The question is, why? It is not moral masturbation to ask this question or to point out the peculiarity and perversity of modern Islamist violence. 

My penny's worth is that this terrorism speaks to a profound crisis of politics and of morality. Where earlier terrorist groups were restrained both by their desire to appear as rational political actors with a clear goal in mind and by basic moral rules of human behaviour - meaning their violence was often bloody, yes, but rarely focused narrowly on committing mass murder - today's Islamist terrorists appear to float free of normal political rules and moral compunctions. 

This is what is so infuriating about the BBC's refusal to call these groups terrorists - because if anything, and historically speaking, even the term terrorist might be too good for them.


Source
The telegraph 

British hero of the mall massacre: Ex Royal Marine with a handgun saved100 lives as terrorists ran amok

As it emerges that many of the terrorists were shamefully British and American, a former British marine emerged as a hero of the Nairobi siege after he was credited with saving up to 100 lives.

The ex soldier was having coffee at the Westgate mall when it was attacked by Islamists on Saturday.
With a gun tucked into his waistband, he was pictured helping two women from the complex.
His story emerged as sporadic gunfire continued to ring out from inside the mall early today as Kenyan security forces battled Al Qaeda-linked terrorists into a fourth day.

Despite Kenyan police assurances that they had taken control of the building, a security expert with contacts inside the mall said at least 10 hostages were still being held by a band of attackers, possibly as many as 13.
Scroll down for video

The former soldier is said to have returned to the building on a dozen occasions, despite intense gunfire.
A friend in Nairobi said: ‘What he did was so heroic. He was having coffee with friends when it happened.
‘He went back in 12 times and saved 100 people. Imagine going back in when you knew what was going on inside.’

Sources said the soldier was in the Royal Marine and now lives in Kenyan. He cannot be named for security reasons.

The British military regularly train and operate out of Kenya, and have been involved in tracking UK citizens involved with hardline Islamists in Somalia and Yemen.


Shielded child

In a separate incident another hero Brit shielded a child from certain death as terrorists opened fire on terrified victims of the Nairobi mall massacre.

Dad of two Simon Belcher, 48, was blasted by crazed Muslim fanatics seconds after grabbing a four-year-old Kenyan boy to safety but the bullet narrowly missed his vital organs.

Wife Amanda, who was with him at the time, wrote later on Facebook: "Simon is okay, making silly jokes, tired, sore, but we were so very, very, very lucky.
"
The couple had just arrived at the mall when the attack that has claimed 61 civilians and six security officers began.

As deafening grenade blasts and machine gun fire echoed around the six storey building, Simon and Amanda, whose two children Sebastian and Phoebe attend boarding school in South Africa, hid under a car on the top floor with the child.

But al-Shabaab terrorists spotted them and opened fire, hitting Simon in the arm and stomach.

The safari tour operator, who is from Perth, was yesterday recovering in the city's Aga Khan Hospital.
A close friend of the couple, who asked not to be named, said: "When the firing started he got underneath a car.

"He was shielding a four-year-old Kenyan child who was also hiding there.

"They were all hidden in the top car park until the military began firing at the al-Shabaab militia.

"The terrorists then all got under cars to escape the gunfire and that's when they spotted Simon underneath a vehicle.


Source
 Mail online
The Mirror

The words "Islam,Muslim" Censored From Newspaper Reports On Kenya, Pakistan Attacks

"The words "Islam,Muslim" Censored From Newspaper Reports On Kenya, Pakistan Attacks

In Nairobi, Kenya last weekend, Islamist militants took over a high-end shopping mall and began executing non-Muslims. In Pakistan, Islamist suicide bombers detonated at a Christian Church on Sunday.

Yet on Monday, September 23, 90 percent of the top ten (via circulation numbers) daily newspapers' headlines in the United States censored the words "Islam" and Muslim" from Nairobi and Pakistan reports. One - the New York Daily News - didn't even have a headline for the latest Islamic terrorist attacks. That's journalism at its finest.

The Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) headline by Heidi Vogt announced that "Assault on Mall Stuns Kenya" and called the act a "terrorist attack" by "armed militants." In a small reference to the Pakistan Christian fatalities, the newspaper credited a group linked with the "Pakistan Taliban."

As the second most popular newspaper after the WSJ, proclaimed "Carnage In Mall Shows Resilience of Terror Group" for an article by Nicholas Kulish, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt. In fact, on the front page the Times used every description but the Islamic connection to describe the aggressors: "the ferocious armed political movement known as the Shabab" - with ties to Al Qaeda and Boko Haram.

Only USA Today (number three in circulation) broke Islam silence with a headline admitting, "Islamists kill dozens in Kenya and Pakistan" (under an even larger headline: "Two New Terror Attacks"). Jim Michaels and William W. Welch's story detailed how "Islamic extremists unleashed bloody attacks."

For Pakistan, the reporters called Sunday's two suicide bombers assault "the deadliest-ever attack against the nation's Christian minority" and included a picture with a caption describing, "a relative of victims of the Christian church bombings."

The New York Post's front page read "BLOODY RAID" and "Kenyan soldiers storm mall, save most hostages. Its Sunday cover showed a woman running with a baby above the words "Terror massacre in Kenya." Only inside the piece were the assailants described as "Islamist attackers" related to "Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents."

The Chicago Sun-Times's website broadcast "2 Militants Killed in Mall Attack: Kenya Minister" by Associated Press' Jason Straziuso and Tom Odula. Inside the piece, the reporters noted that "two Islamic extremists were killed."

The Washington Post's front page read "Kenyan Forces Move Into Mall, Rescue Many" for a piece by Sudarsan Raghavan and Greg Miller. The story below noted "Islamist militants" connected to al-Shabab militia and Al Qaeda. For Pakistan, The Washington Post blamed "suicide bombers" for murdering "scores outside a Christian church."

The rest of newspapers unabashedly blacked out Islamic ties in reports. The Los Angeles Times's front page to "Kenya Fights Terrorists in Mall Siege," by Nicholas Soi and Robyn Dixon, charged "Somali militants." The Denver Post's front page, for "Kenya Moves to End Siege at Mall" by The Washington Post's Sudarsan Raghavan, faulted "heavily armed assailants" for Nairobi and "bombers" for Pakistan. Chicago Tribune's front, entitled, "Security Forces Launch Assault to End Mall Standoff," cited "Somali militants."

Last and least, the New York Daily News offered nada on the front page to the attacks. The publication deemed the Emmys and baseball news more worthy.

Source

Jews News

Nairobi attack: Hostages found "hanging from ceiling" with their "eyes gouged out" as full details of horror emerge

Hostages inside the Westgate shopping mall were left hanging from hooks in the ceiling and had their eyes gouged out, it emerged today.

Victims of the four day terror siege were also discovered dismembered and had their fingers removed with pliers. Some male victims were also found castrated.

The gruesome scenes inside the mall were discovered by horrified doctors and soldiers who entered the building once the siege ended.

Soldiers initially described the "scene from a horror movie"  but only now have the full, horrific details emerged.

Rescue workers discovered children dead in fridges with knives embedded in their bodies. Dead terrorists bodies were also burned - with the last extremist left thought to have set fire to them to protect identities.

This image shows the destruction at the Westgate Shopping Centre

Speaking to the Daily Mail, one Kenyan doctor, who asked not to be named, said: "You find people with hooks hanging from the roof.

"They removed eyes, ears, nose. Actually if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers."

It also emerged today that the al Shabaab militants used a large machine gun during the attack.

U.S officials said the terrorists would have spent a great deal of time planning and staging the siege in Nairobi.

They say the militants may have moved a large machine gun and supplies of ammunition into place somewhere inside the mall days or weeks before the attack - perhaps by renting a shop or secretly using space provided by a sympathetic shop owner or employee.

A fire caused the car park roof to collapse into the centre

The first pictures of the wreckage of the building showed piles of bodies strewn across the floor.

Security forces around the globe are now locked in a desperate hunt to find British muslim terrorist Samantha Lewthwaite as officials warned she could strike again.

Interpol issued a warrant for the 29-year-old Muslim convert, dubbed the White Widow, six days after she was suspected of playing a key role in the al-Shabaab massacre of at least 67 people, including Brits, at a shopping centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Kenyan security officials issued a Red Notice asking other countries to help track down the fanatic - who has become the world's most wanted woman since the horrific bloodbath.

Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble said: "Kenya has activated a global "tripwire" for this fugitive.

"Through the Interpol Red Notice, Kenyan authorities have ensured all 190 member countries are aware of the danger posed by this woman, not just across the region but also worldwide."

Source

Mirror 

The Danger In Our Midst

Is it because there are verses in the Qu'ran that can be, and have been, used to justify violence against non-Muslims? If this is the situation, then it is time for us to lift our heads out of the sand, and understand that the enemy is within.

The past week has been bloodier than usual in the Muslim world. Three major attacks in different parts of the world -- Iraq, Pakistan and Kenya -- have one thing in common: they were pre-meditated terror attacks on civilians executed in a wanton manner as part of an armed jihad.

On the attack in Kenya at Nairobi's Westgate Mall, Kenya's President Uhunu Kenyatta made a clear statement: "We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall get to them and we shall punish them for this heinous crime. We have overcome terrorist attacks before. We will defeat them again. They want to cause fear and despondency in our country, but we will not be cowed." Then, referring to Somalia's al-Shabab terrorists who claimed responsibility for the assault, he added, "Terrorism is a philosophy of cowards."

For those of us sitting in North America in the wake of such carnage, Kenyatta's words resonate well: he addressed the problem head-on. We look for support to the leader of the free world, the U.S., because the OIC [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] has let us down by giving priority to their own agenda on Islamophobia in the West and remaining silent when Muslims indulge in wanton terrorism -- in fact, they object to use of the word "terrorist" attached to Muslims. It seems, however, that the free world has a soft stance on terrorism. The only bold statement made a while ago was, "we have destroyed Al-Qaeda." Then why is the U.S. continuing to arm it in Syria?

We have become somewhat immune to the games being played while innocent lives are lost. One of the games is the instant knee-jerk reaction of the apologists and conspiracy theorists. How much more bloodshed and carnage do we have to see and endure before we wake up to the reality that something dangerous has taken root in the heart of the Muslims who kill in the name of faith?

There were two other suicide bombings this week. One in Baghdad and the other in Pakistan where a church was bombed.

What is surprising and baffling is that even today we cannot come to terms with the evidence that we have a serious problem within our ranks.

In Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), considered to be one of the world's largest intelligence agencies, has not contained the violence unleashed upon Pakistan's minorities. According to some recent reports, there is a special squad, financed by petrodollars and sanctioned by the authorities, created exactly for the purpose of killing minorities -- and this is seemingly why nobody to date has been brought to justice. Recently there have also been massive jailbreaks, freeing hundreds of terrorists.

Further, it is rumoured that many shipments of U.S. arms, on their way from Karachi harbor to Afghanistan, have gone missing. Ironically, both the escaped terrorists and the arms surfaced in Syria.

So now, my co-religionists, there are some pressing questions we must ask because our faith as practiced today doesn't embrace humanity, modernity, music, arts or literature. What we have to see is whether the reformists, academics and scholars can pull this faith into the 21^st century to co-exist with others, or will the militant swords cut the hands that hold the pen?

Furthermore, why is it that, when there is even a single death in the "conflict in the Middle East," Pakistanis will beat their chests, run out on the street, and rally with slogans against the USA and Israel -- but do not come out into the streets when their own countrymen massacre entire families of Christians and destroy churches?

And why is it that there is no voice from the pulpit, and the Sunni majority does not even bat an eyelash about the death squads against Shias and the persecution of Ahmedis?

Is it because "Cyber Mullahs," "Hadeeth Hurlers" and "Qu'ran Thumpers" are invoking their interpretation of the Qu'ran, and insisting that armed jihad is valid and needed today while we say it is time to make it obsolete?

Is it because there are verses in the Qu'ran that can be, and have been, used to justify violence against non-Muslims?

If this is the situation, then it is time for us to lift our heads out of the sand, and understand that the enemy is within.

Platitudes about Islam being a faith of peace are not credible anymore. Islam is only as good as the way its followers practice it; and if they have created killing fields in the name of Islam, then Islam will be recognized by the silence of those who did not speak out when their faith was being massacred to massacre humanity.

by Raheel Raza

Israeli professionalism pays off as Kenya Turned Down America's Help and turned instead to Israel

THE New York Times has reported that Kenyan authorities initially declined offers of assistance from the American government on the Westgate Shopping Mall attack.

According to the paper, the Kenyan authorities were also reluctant to have Britain and France help with attempts to wrest control of the mall from the terrorists.

They instead turned to the Israelis. Israel dispatched advisers from the Israeli Defence Forces who have since been working closely with Kenyan commandos inside the mall, helping plan specific tactical operations.

The New York Times said the Israeli advisers did not engage in combat and stayed out of public view.

"American, French and British officials have been left with a more back-seat role from a command centre just down the street from the Westgate Mall, helping the Kenyans with the investigation of the attack and some intelligence matters," the paper quoted a high-ranking Kenyan official as saying.

The UK's Daily Mail reported that an off-duty member of the Britain's Special Air Service who was at Westgate at the time of the attack single handedly rescued 100 people.

Source 

Africa Headlines 

BBC disgracefully still won't call these murderers "terrorists"

Here's how the BBC describes the terrorists who have slaughtered at last 69 people in the Westgate mall in Nairobi:

Now, we don't expect the Beeb to describe the al-Shabab killers as "animals" in a news report. That was the word used, perfectly appropriately, by Louis Bowa, who is waiting for the bodies of his wife and eight-year-old daughter to be recovered from the shopping mall. It's a metaphor and would look strange in a piece of reporting. The right word is "terrorists". For example:

British businessman condemns terrorists who murdered his daughter

... which is a Telegraph headline. And, from the body of one of our reports:

As the terrorists roamed the mall with guns and grenades...

Let's get this straight. There is nothing wrong with using the word "militants" to describe the al-Shabab gunmen. But they are also terrorists, by any criterion, and that word should also be used.

The Beeb won't do it, however. It virtually bans the word from reporting, lest it be used "inappropriately". Many BBC journalists, who are overwhelmingly on the Left, support the causes for which armed gunmen fight in, say, Palestine. Therefore there's no question of describing Hamas as a terrorist organisation. This I can just about understand, given that Hamas is also a powerful political party, though I don't agree with the policy.

But in what universe are Islamists who spray women and children with bullets in a shopping centre not terrorists? The BBC may say: we have a rule and we have to apply it universally. This is nonsense. That's what editors are for.

But hang on. On re-reading a BBC report, I see that it does use the T-word:

Kenyan officials said earlier that three "terrorists" had been killed, and that 10 people had been arrested.

Those inverted commas are more contemptible than not using the word at all. And remember: you pay for this.

British, Israeli, US experts enter Westgate - Kimemia

Foreign forensic experts have joined their Kenyan counterparts in the search for more bodies at the Westgate shopping complex, which was seized by terrorists on Saturday.

A tweet by the Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Kimemia on Wednesday morning indicated that experts from Israel, America and the United Kingdom (UK) had arrived at the site and would be allowed to participate in the search. 

The exercise will include the sifting of rubble in search of bodies trapped after three floors collapsed during the massive security operation which included heavy gunfire and blasts.

"Leading forensic experts from other countries allowed to join search including Israel, USA (United States of America) and UK but Kenya leads," tweeted Kimemia.

On Tuesday night, President Uhuru Kenyatta said that 61 civilians and six security forces had been killed in the attack.

Five of the terrorists were also killed during the security operation.

"Towards the tail end of the operation, three floors of the Westgate Mall collapsed and there are several bodies still trapped in the rubble including the terrorists'," Kenyatta said.

"Starting tomorrow I have instructed the Interior Ministry to keep Kenyans informed of the progress of the forensic investigations."

Three Britons have already been confirmed dead but British officials have been quoted in various media reports as saying that the number could go higher.

Two Canadians among them a diplomat, one Chinese woman, one Dutch national, two French nationals- a woman and her daughter, a Ghanaian, two Indians, a Peruvian doctor, one South African and a South Korean have also been confirmed dead.

A gang of about 10 to 15 terrorists raided the Mall at around midday Saturday and started shooting patrons at random.

Horrific tales of the incident indicate that the gang indiscriminately shot at women, children and men with cries for mercy being ignored.

They took over the Mall for about three days before Kenyan security agents finally announced that they had taken control of the Mall.

It is still not clear whether or not British terror suspect Samantha Lewthwaite was among the terrorists and what role she might have played in the attack.

Kenya Red Cross is helping relatives to trace their loved ones and as at Tuesday evening, the organisation had reported 64 people as those that are missing.

"Right now I can only tell you that we have recorded 64 people as those that are missing but I cannot disclose any other details," said a Kenya Red Cross female official who declined to be named.

Source 

Capital FM

Why Israel is advising Kenya in mall attack response

Scarred by memories of a pair of attacks on Israeli targets in Africa a decade ago, Israel has dispatched a team of experts to its close ally Kenya to advise authorities on the bloody standoff at a Nairobi shopping mall.

While officials refuse to discuss the precise nature of the assistance, Israeli leaders have made it clear they believe the defeat of the Al Qaeda militants behind the mall attack will have great meaning around the world.

"Israel is always ready to help other countries, other friendly countries, in combating terrorism. I think that terrorism has become a threat to the entire world and therefore countries — United States, Israel and other Western countries — should cooperate," Yuval Steinitz, Israel's cabinet minister for strategic affairs said.

Israel has had strong commercial interests across Africa for decades. But only in recent years has it begun to view Africa, particularly eastern Africa, as being of vital strategic interest in the battle against Islamic extremists. One of those groups, Al-Shabab, has claimed responsibility for the Nairobi attack, which has left dozens dead.

Kenya has been a leading player in this Israeli effort, although it is certainly not alone. The two countries exchange intelligence, and Israel has provided security training to the eastern African country, according to experts and officials.

In all, more than 40 senior African dignitaries have visited Israel in the past two years, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Among them were the presidents of Rwanda, Uganda, Togo and South Sudan, as well as the prime minister of Kenya. The president of Nigeria is expected soon.

An Israeli diplomat who has participated in these meetings said the changes in the region unleashed by the Arab Spring were a key catalyst for these visits. The changes have led to increased activity by Islamic extremists and unleashed a flood of weapons across the region following the downfall of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a confidential diplomatic issue, said the threat of Islamic fundamentalism has been a major topic of discussion.

Specifically, he said, the African leaders have been interested in Israel's firsthand experience battling Islamic militants.

Although the groups in Africa are not believed to have direct links to those fighting Israel, they have similar ideologies and international sponsors. Israel says that its foe Iran ships weapons to militants in the Gaza Strip through Africa. The Horn of Africa is also a strategic shipping route for Israel.

"What they would want is basically to share understanding and information more than anything else," the official said, adding it is "no secret" that Israel exports some weapons to Africa.

Israeli officials refuse to say what type of military assistance is sent to African allies or who is being armed, saying only that any sales must be aboveboard and approved by the Defense Ministry. The ministry declined to comment.

Dani Arditi, a former chairman of Israel's Counter-Terrorism Bureau and National Security Council, said a pair of attacks on Israeli targets near the Kenyan resort city of Mombasa in 2002 marked an important turning point. In those attacks, militants bombed an Israeli-owned luxury hotel, killing 13 people, and fired two missiles at an Israeli airliner as it took off, narrowly missing the aircraft.

"Since then, the cooperation, intelligence cooperation mainly ... is a high priority in Kenya," he said. He said cooperation also included "training, exercising together" but refused to elaborate.

Israeli interests in Kenya run deep. According to the website of Israel's embassy in Nairobi, Israel has provided technical assistance in areas such as agriculture and medicine for decades, in some cases going back to the days before Kenyan independence in 1963.

This cooperation continued even after Kenya and other African states cut diplomatic ties with Israel following the 1973 Mideast war. During the 1976 commando operation in which Israel rescued dozens of hostages from Entebbe Airport in Uganda, Israeli aircraft were permitted to refuel in Kenya. Diplomatic ties resumed in 1988.

More recently, Israel and Kenya signed a treaty to cooperate in the fight against terrorism, money laundering and other crime in 2011.

Today, Israelis are a visible part of Nairobi's large expatriate community. They run businesses in a number of fields, and they have opened several cafes and restaurants — including at least four in the Westgate mall. No Israelis are known to be among the dead.

Israeli defense officials confirmed a team of experts was dispatched to Nairobi within hours of the hostage crisis.

The officials, who declined to be identified because they were discussing a confidential security matter, would not say what types of services were being provided, but said armed fighting units were not part of the delegation.

Nitzan Nuriel, another former head of the Counter-Terrrorism Bureau, said Kenya was among three African countries, along with Tanzania and Ethiopia, to receive security training from Israel about two years ago. At the time, Israeli police, military and counterterrorism officials trained counterparts in the three countries, he said.

Nuriel said the training is part of a broader effort that began in earnest with a trip to five African countries by then-foreign Minister.

Nuriel, who accompanied Lieberman, said at every stop the message was clear. "Everything having to do with the war on terror, we have a common enemy. Let's cooperate," he quoted African officials as saying.

In addition to Kenya, he said Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania have strong intelligence cooperation with Israel, providing information on some 10 Islamist groups, including Al-Shabab and Boko Haram, a similar group in Nigeria.

In addition, West African countries provide intelligence on Hezbollah operatives involved in drug-running and money laundering, Nuriel said.

Hagai Katz of Magal Security Systems Ltd., an Israeli security company, said his firm this year completed a $25 million project securing Kenya's port in Mombasa. In 2012, it was responsible for stadium security at the African Cup in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, he said.

Nir Shaul, founder of Israeli security company Nirtal, said his firm has provided training and equipment — including night-vision technology and helmets — to anti-terror police forces and presidential guards across Africa in recent years.

"An untrained soldier is very dangerous," Shaul said. "A trained soldier can target the terror cell without doing surrounding damage that turns the citizens against the ruling power."

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Kenya: 'If You Were Muslim They Let You Go'

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Associated Press 

No, Mr Cameron. The Kenyan massacre is all about Islamism

Here we go again. A group of Islamist terrorists armed with guns and grenades head into a shopping mall in Kenya. They separate out the Muslims from the non-Muslims, let the former go free and massacre the latter.

Cue the usual responses. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, says:

‘These appalling terrorist attacks that take place where the perpetrators claim they do it in the name of a religion – they don’t.  They do it in the name of terror, violence and extremism and their warped view of the world. They don’t represent Islam or Muslims in Britain or anywhere else in the world.’ 

I don’t think any sensible person would argue that the perpetrators represent all Muslims. But it seems strange to say that a separation of people — and massacre of them — based solely on their religious identity can be said to have nothing to do with religion.

Various Muslims and other commentators have done the same shtick — once again claiming that the motivations of the extremists are nothing to do with religion, but are instead political in motive. More original attempts to escape the point include the suggestion by Sir Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardianthat shopping malls themselves are to blame for the attack:

‘The modern urban obsession with celebrity buildings and high-profile events offers too many publicity-rich targets. A World Trade Centre, a Mumbai hotel, a Boston marathon, a Nairobi shopping mall are all enticing to extremists. Defending them is near impossible. Better at least not to create them. A shopping mall not only wipes out shopping streets, it makes a perfect terrorist fortress, near impossible to assault.’

All of which suggests, for the thousandth time, that everybody is trying to avoid the point.

I can see why politicians like David Cameron want to make sure that nobody blames Muslims as a whole for attacks like this. But telling the lie that such attacks have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam does no good at all. It lets the extremists off the hook and infuriates everybody else who end up wondering why the Prime Minister cannot see what everybody else can see.

As I have said often in response to this ‘noble lie’, the only way that Islam is going to get through its current problems is if followers of the religion realise that they have to actively confront the problem. Each provision of an opt-out and excuse delays the day when the religion properly confronts itself and makes the claims of the jihadis a wholly impermissible — instead of plausible and sometimes permissible — response to the religion in whose name they act.

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Jihad in Kenya

Kenya: 'If You Were Muslim They Let You Go'

Defenders of freedom? Looks like the US and UK are now exporters of terrorism as British and Americans revealed to be key players inslaughter

Kenya: 'If You Were Muslim They Let You Go'

By Douglas Murry 

Jihad in Kenya

As of Sunday afternoon, Islamic jihadists in an upscale Kenyan mall have murdered 59 people and wounded 175, and were still holding at least 30 hostages. All (or at least most) of the victims have been non-Muslims, for as witness Elijah Kamau reported: “The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe, and non-Muslims would be targeted.”

The murderers didn’t just take the word of those who were trying to leave that they were Muslims. One of the hostages, a non-Muslim named Joshua Hakim, recounted that the jihadists were “firing indiscriminately, they shot a lot of people” – hence the possibility that some Muslims may have been hit. Hakim himself covered his Christian name on his ID card and showed it to the jihadists, who were apparently satisfied that he was Muslim. However, Hakim said, “Then an Indian man came forward and they said, ‘What is the name of Muhammad’s mother?’ When he couldn’t answer they just shot him.”

Non-Muslims who wish to prepare for the future of the United States and other non-Muslim nations may wish to commit to memory the factoid that Muhammad’s mother was Amina bint Wahb; however, the most noteworthy aspect of these jihadists’ selection process was that it forced the mainstream media, which generally ignores, denies, and/or obfuscates the Islamic identity and motives of jihad murderers, to report about the jihadists’ desire to kill only non-Muslims, not Muslims.

This was singular. Remember that before the Boston Marathon jihad murderers were identified, the mainstream media was full of hope that they had finally witnessed a violent terror attack by Bible-quoting Christian killers, as they had hoped for for years.

Media reports were full of speculation about how the bombings appeared to be the work of “right-wing extremists,” “Tea Partiers,” and the like. On the day of the bombings, Charles P. Pierce in Esquire was one of the first of many to caution people against thinking that the Marathon had just been the site of a jihad attack (“foreign terrorism”) and to try to link the bombings to the Right: “Obviously, nobody knows anything yet, but I would caution folks jumping to conclusions about foreign terrorism to remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts, celebrating the Battles at Lexington and Concord, and that the actual date (April 19) was of some significance to, among other people, Tim McVeigh, because he fancied himself a waterer of the tree of liberty and the like.”

Likewise, CNN’s national security analyst, Peter Bergen, speculated that if “conventional explosives” had been used, “that might be some other kind of right-wing extremists,” as opposed to Al Qaeda. He reminded viewers that “we’ve also seen other extremist groups attacking, right-wing groups, for instance trying to attack the Martin Luther King parade in Oregon in 2010.”

Most egregiously of all, David Sirota of Salon hoped that the bomber would turn out to be a “white American.”

Sirota, of course, got his wish. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were indeed white – indeed, veritable Caucasians – and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a naturalized American citizen.

The Tsarnaev brothers’ motivations quickly became clear. CNN reported a week after the bombings that “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wounded and held in a Boston hospital, has said his brother — who was killed early Friday — wanted to defend Islam from attack.”

Also, just before he was captured, when he was hiding out inside a pleasure boat, Dzhokhar wrote a long self-justification on the inside of the boat, including the line: “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims.”

Tamerlan also said, “I’m very religious.” His friend Donald Larkingaffirmed this: “Tamerlan Tsarnaev was my friend and we talked about everything from politics to religion. He was very, very religious. He believed that the Qur’an was the one true word and he loved it.” Tamerlan noted that he did not drink alcohol because Allah forbade it: “God said no alcohol,” and that his Italian girlfriend had converted to Islam, as his American wife did later. Even his name indicated the world from which he had come: Tamerlan Tsarnaev was apparently named for the warrior Tamerlane, the fourteenth-century conqueror of much of Asia, who was as noted for his Muslim piety as he was for his bloodlust: in 1398, he massacred 100,000 Hindus in Delhi, and killed 90,000 more people in Baghdad in 1401, all the while his devout adherence to the religion of Muhammad. This was the figure for whom Tamerlan Tsarnaev was named.

Combine all that with the fact that the Boston Marathon bombs were similar to IED’s that jihadis used in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a jihad car bomb in Times Square in the summer of 2010, used a similar bomb, and that instructions for making such a bomb had been published in al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine, and the motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers were abundantly clear.

Yet despite all this, the mainstream media continued to obfuscate the truth. On July 15, 2013, three months after the bombings and long after the Tsarnaev brothers’ motivations had become clear, PBS — without mentioning Dzhokhar’s statements or any other evidence of the bombers’ motivations – expressed hope that the surviving brother’s trial would “shed more light on the motive behind the bombing.”

NBC made only scant mention of the brothers’ connections to Islam in their profile of them, noting only eight paragraphs down in a lengthy story that “Tamerlan had a YouTube page that featured videos about Islamic radicalism.” CNN’s initial profile of the bombers never mentioned Islam at all, and suggested instead that the bombers had decided to blow up the Marathon because Americans had not extended to these two immigrants a welcoming hand, quoting a comment Tamerlan made on a social media site: “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”

When journalists deigned to examine the brothers’ Islamic identity, they downplayed it. The Atlantic ran a piece entitled “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim – So?” It complained that “we confuse categories – ‘male,’ ‘Muslim’ — with cause,” and cautioned against stereotyping all Muslims, painting them with a broad brush.

Meanwhile, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had on an FBI agent who asked about the bombers, “Where was their inspiration? Where did they get the guidance?” To that Matthews  responded: “Why is that important? Why is that important to — is that important to prosecuting? I mean, what difference does it make why they did it if they did it? I’m being tough here.” Also on MSNBC, Martin Bashir lamented about how these Muslim bombers were “burying the ‘peace, compassion and kindness of the Qur’an.’”

The jihad murderers in Kenya, unbeknownst to themselves, did not allow for this kind of media obfuscation. With their single act of freeing Muslims and murdering non-Muslims, they did more to raise awareness of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat than anyone in recent memory in this age of denial, obfuscation, and misinformation. The media couldn’t ignore their selection process. And now thousands of people know that they’ve been lied to, and lied to for years. We can only hope that these newly enlightened will be moved to act for justice before yet another jihad mass murderer makes his bloody arrival on the scene.

related - Kenya: 'If You Were Muslim They Let You Go'

Defenders of freedom? Looks like the US and UK are now exporters of terrorism as British and Americans revealed to be key players inslaughter

Kenya: 'If You Were Muslim They Let You Go'

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