A report filed by the government before the International Court of Justice has revealed key players in the January 15, 2019, dusitD2 Hotel attack in Nairobi.
Below are their profiles and roles in the attacks that left 21 dead.
Mahir Khalid Riziki
Mahir Khalid Riziki, born on February 5, 1993, was the longest-serving member of al Shabaab in the attack group and was designated as the suicide bomber. Aged 25 at the time of the attack, Riziki was born raised in the Majengo area of Mombasa.
Ramadhan Hamisi Kufungwa, a well-known Kenyan al Shabaab recruiter now located in Somalia, recruited Riziki at Musa Mosque in early 2014. Musa Mosque has long been associated with radicalisation, recruitment for al Shabaab and religious violence.
In 2014, Riziki formed part of an assassination cell tasked by al Shabaab to assassinate security personnel in the Coast region. In October 2014, Riziki was involved in the killing of a police officer at Royal Court Hotel in Mombasa. He fled to Tanzania in November 2014 after being placed on Kenya’s most-wanted list with a Sh2 million bounty on his head.
In early 2015, Riziki contacted family members in Mombasa to inform them he had relocated to Somalia, where he was undergoing training by al Shabaab.
Ali Salim Gichunge
The cell leader, Ali Salim Gichunge, was born in 1992 in Isiolo. In 2015, his mother reported that he had travelled to Somalia. He also travelled to Somalia in 2017 through Lamu.
Gichunge acted as the coordinator and organiser, while Gedi, the other Kenyan national in the attack group, served as Gichunge’s lieutenant.
Gichunge was highly conscious of the security of communications. For instance, he never contacted Somalia by phone, only using Facebook. He turned his phone off when he travelled to meet associates and spoke to Riziki only on a dedicated phone line. Gichunge was an ideal recruit for al Shabaab as he was the son of a retired military officer, embracing Western culture and did not fit the profile of an extremist.
Osman Ibrahim Gedi
Gedi was a Kenyan national born in 1992. On January 2, 2019, he registered a new Kenyan mobile phone in Danaba, Northeastern, in the name of “Abdikadir Mohamud Sabdow”.
He arrived in Nairobi early on January 4, and Gichunge and Gedi travelled together to the safe house on the evening of January 10, 2019.
Gedi visited the Dusit complex twice in the week prior to the attack. Kenyan investigators recovered a Tanzanian driver’s licence from Gedi’s body. Investigations show the licence was genuine and had been registered in Moshi, Tanzania. However, the biographical details provided in the application proved to be false, and the fingerprint used to obtain the licence did not match Gedi’s.
Siyat Omar Abdi
Abdi was born in 1992 in Dagahaley, which is one of the Dadaab refugee camps.
Abdi activated a new Kenyan phone on January 4, 2019, in preparation for the attack, and travelled to Nairobi from Dagahaley the next day. The phone immediately placed a call to Somalia after its activation, and Abdi continued to contact numbers in Somalia until January 14, 2019, when the phone was last used. On January 13, 2019, Abdi moved to the Gichunges’ safe house, where he stayed until the attack.
Police obtained a Dadaab camp identification and ration card number attributed to Abdi but World Food Programme and UNHCR officials in Dadaab stated there was no record of Abdi in their databases.
Unknown gunman of Somali origin
An unknown member of the attacking team, presumed to be of Somali origin, activated a new Kenyan mobile phone in Dagahaley, Dadaab refugee camp, on December 15, 2018. Two days later, he travelled from Dagahaley to Eastleigh and the journey lasted eight hours, which, due to the duration, suggested it was undertaken in a private vehicle rather than with public transportation.
He was hidden in Eastleigh, Nairobi, until January 12, 2019, when he was in contact with Gedi and subsequently moved to the Nairobi safe house on January 13. He could not speak English or Kiswahili, which likely was the rationale for concealing him in Eastleigh for a month, where he was unlikely to arouse suspicion.
Violet Wanjiru
Also known as Kemunto and Khadija, Violet Wanjiru was married to the cell leader Gichunge in 2016. Wanjiru's primary role was in assisting Gichunge with the management of the safe house.
Wanjiru was unaware of the suicidal nature of the impending attack, and she believed Gichunge would later flee to Somalia to join her. Wanjiru’s inside knowledge of the al Shabaab cell meant it was vital to al Shabaab that she not be arrested.
She moved from the Nairobi safe house on January 11, 2019, and travelled through Wajir and El Wak to Mandera along the B9 highway, arriving in Mandera on the evening of the same day. She remained in Mandera until January 14 and then crossed into Somalia.
Throughout this journey, according to the report, she was aided by Yusuf Ali Adan, a Mandera-based al Shabaab operative, with whom she communicated on a newly activated phone line.
Wanjiru was housed in the border region in a safe house under al-Shabaab control for a number of weeks before being moved further into al Shabaab territory and into isolation to observe Iddah, a period of waiting following the death of a husband. Her exact whereabouts are unknown.
