But…but…poverty and alienation cause terrorism! John Kerry and Marie Harf told us so!
“Kenyan Authorities Say Son of Official Was Among Gunmen in University Attack,” by Jeffrey Gettleman and Isma’il Kushkush, New York Times, April 5, 2015 (thanks to Block Ness):
NAIROBI, Kenya — One of the gunmen who attacked the Kenyan university where nearly 150 students were massacred last week was the son of a government official — and once himself a promising student — who had recently broken off contact with his family and disappeared, the Kenyan authorities said Sunday.
The discovery was made after Kenyan police officers paraded the gunman’s naked, bullet-riddled body in the back of a pickup truck. It immediately rekindled fears that chaos in neighboring Somalia was not the only factor driving terrorist attacks in Kenya and that the problem here may be more homegrown.
Tremendous grief, pain, rising frustration and a palpable sense of dread were starting to seep across Kenya as a three-day period of mourning began and the bodies of 142 students slowly made their way back to towns and quiet villages in nearly every corner of this country.
Accounts emerged Sunday that the police commandos who finally ended the siege of the university did not arrive until more than eight hours after the attack began because of logistical issues, raising questions about whether more young people could have been saved.
“Something has to change,” said an editorial in the Sunday Nation, a Kenyan newspaper. “Kenya must change from its Hakuna Matata posture” — “hakuna matata” is a common Swahili expression meaning “no problem” — “and realize that a war is afoot against a merciless enemy.”…
The whole world needs to realize that.
opinionated says
a report from the Daily Nation (Newspaper Kenya)
A 24-year-old former University of Nairobi law student was the leader of the Al-Shabaab killer squad that slaughtered 148 people at Garissa University College.
Mohammed Abdirahim Abdullahi, the son of Abdullahi Daqare, the chief of Bulla Jamhuri location in Mandera County, will likely go down in history as the mass murderer with the most innocent face.
Nicknamed Ababmo by his classmates at the Law Faculty in Nairobi’s Parklands Campus, he was a sharp dresser, tending to favour tailored suits and loved to shoot pool with his friends.
He had a room on campus but he rarely stayed there, preferring to operate out of Eastleigh, where he was said to run a business selling cooking gas. Classmates assumed that this accounted for the fact that he seemed to have more money than them.
Mr Dedan Wachira, who played pool with him often at Parklands recalled: “I asked him once, and I don’t know whether he was joking or lying, but he told me his suits cost Sh16,000. They looked like they cost that much. He actually introduced me to my first tailor.”
Mr Wachira described his former schoolmate as a well-spoken fellow who did not shy away from making his point of view known in the debates that are regular in law classes.
But below the nice suits and the veneer of normality was a cauldron of hatred and religious fanaticism which culminated in mass murder last week.
JOIN ISIS
Blogger and independent journalist Yassin Juma wrote on his blog that when Abdirahim left home, it was generally known that he had gone to join Al-Shabaab. According to the blogger, Abdirahim’s initial intention was to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) but he did not have a passport.
According to the blogger, Abdirahim’s classmate from Wamy Secondary School, known as Mohamed but nicknamed Atom, managed to fly to Turkey and is assumed to have crossed into Syria to join Isis.
Like Abdirahim, Atom failed to complete his degree course at the University of Nairobi.
A former schoolmate at the university told the Nation Abdirahim might have dropped out to concentrate on becoming a terrorist.
Another friend and classmate from Wamy Secondary School also reportedly joined Al-Shabaab with Abdirahim, said the journalist.
Mandera County Commissioner Alex ole Nkoyo told Nation the chief had reported that his son would call him using numbers unfamiliar to him and when asked where he was, he would terminate calls.
Mr Nkoyo said he had spoken to the chief on Sunday morning and the administrator had told him he had forgotten about his son and considered him dead until his re-emergence in Garissa.
Mr Nkoyo added that from his interactions with the chief from Bulla Jamhuri, he suspected Abdirahim may have come into contact with extremists while at Wamy High School.
Mr Wachira, who knew Abdirahim, Sunday said of him: “His arguments were very rational. Even in class, he was very rational. That’s why I’m surprised he could have been radicalised.”
Mr Wachira was among several people on Twitter who identified the dead terrorist on the floor in a striped shirt with the left side of his face visible as a former student at the University of Nairobi.
The photographs of the dead terrorists, who were also paraded to the public in Garissa on Saturday, have been widely shared on social media, but Abdirahim was the only one immediately identified.
Edgar Allen says
Robert Spencer missed the big point in this NYTimes fiasco. This article is worse than the NBC article about “UK: 2 teens arrested for something”.
There is NOT A SINGLE WORD about Islam. Muslims, Al Shabab terror group, , the name of the son of the Govt official, (which would be easily identified as Muslim) OR THE FACT THAT THE VICTIMS WERE SELECTED BECAUSE THEY WERE CHRISTIAN, AND THE MUSLIMS WERE RELEASED.
Nimrod says
I still say that Marie Harf needs to be airdropped into ISIL territory so she can have a shot at converting everyone to her “nuanced” neo-Marxist conflict theory.
Stuart Smith says
The islam / muslim terrorists seem to have had a free hand to do what they wanted to do, strange to me as I know Africa well, the school near the Somali border no armed guards, well there is a problem they ignored totally.
And no students were able to fight back with small arms, one thing is you do not have to move far away from the school and you are in wild animal territory and these things eat you, no one had something to defend against even that?
Stevan says
Islam is doomed ,
Even it’s passive followers are so in deniel that the religion of peace is anything but peaceful!
Islam can never reform nor can it exist peacefully with other religions!
It’s destiny is Doom!
Walter Sieruk says
It very much need to be reiterated. That is it was reported on the television news about that murderous Islamic terror attack at that college in Kenya that one person who had lived through it has ask one of the Muslim terrorist what he and the other members of his group wanted ? The Muslim terrorists answered “Nothing be to kill and to be killed.” This is madness ! What’s more this murderous madness is straight from the Koran. Which reads “The believers fight in Allah’s Cause, they slay and are slain, kill and are killed.” Sura 9:111. This sure is one strange kind of “peaceful religion.”
Oliver says
If they want to be killed, why not just kill each other 9or themselves?)?
leave all others alone.
Want to join ISIS? join, and be killed.
I would hope that Hezbollah; Iran and their revolutionary Guards, Syrian free Army, Al Qeida and Hamas and the PA all get together in Syria and/or Iraq and have a fight to the death-to the last man (?) (person?) (whatever they want to call themselves) AND ALL SIDES SUCCEED.
Leith Wood says
As of today, April 7th, Obama has not said anything about the ghastly murders of the students in Kenya! If he said anything, he might have to say who caused them and that is beyond him. Disgusting. Poor America has no leader! We are at war with Islamic terrorism.