Remains of Nairobi shopping mall gunmen ‘found’

Four AK-47 assault rifles were found alongside the remains which have been sent to the Nairobi city mortuary.

A security official said tests would be carried out to determine if the remains were those of the attackers.

The two boxes were taken to the mortuary on Thursday, and yesterday Western forensic examiners arrived and locked the boxes containing the remains, a mortuary official said. FBI agents have been investigating since soon after gunmen invaded the upmarket Westgate Mall on September 21.

One of the four gunmen was identified by a real name for the first time: Abdi Dhuhulow, a Norwegian-Somali, according to the security official. Norwegian tax records show a Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow was born in 1990 and was registered at an address in Larvik, southern Norway, as late as 2009.

One man living in another Scandinavian country, who only gave his first name, Yussuf, said he believes he met the gunman at a gathering of Somali immigrants in Oslo in 2008.

Yussuf recalled the man’s name as Abdi and said he was associated with “pretty radical” circles in Norway.

“He was mad. He didn’t feel at home in Norway,” Yussuf said, declining to give his last name out of fear of reprisals from supporters of al-Shabab, the Somali Islamic militant group. Yussuf said he had not had any contact with the man since then but added that several people he knew thought they had recognised him in the closed-circuit TV footage of the mall attack.

“We said that it could be him when we looked at the video,” Yussuf said.

Newly released security video shows that four gunmen entered the mall and casually opened fire on shoppers, the beginning of a four-day siege that resulted in a massive fire and the mall’s partial collapse.

The AK 47s were found with 11 magazines of ammunition – all apparently used by the attackers. A rocket-propelled grenade, probably from Kenyan security forces, was also recovered.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to go after the group.