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Norway Investigates Possible Assailant in Kenya Mall Siege In Kenya Inquiry, Norway Looks at Somali Migrant
(about 11 hours later)
LARVIK, Norway — The trail in the investigation of the deadly attack on a Kenyan shopping mall last month leads all the way to Scandinavia, where the Norwegian police have identified a man who may have been among the assailants. LARVIK, Norway — As a boy, the Somali immigrant sold newspapers door to door in this peaceful seaside Norwegian town and told neighbors he was going to be a doctor and help people in Africa.
Investigators are questioning relatives and friends of Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, 23, a Norwegian citizen born in Somalia, to try to determine whether he was one of the four militants captured on surveillance footage inside the mall in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, calmly killing shoppers on a Saturday afternoon. In high school, he began taking a prayer rug to school, but in a community with many Somalis — not to mention Muslims from Libya, Chechnya and elsewhere — he hardly stood out. He rarely got into even mild trouble.
His sister, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview here in Larvik, where Mr. Dhuhulow grew up, that officers from the Norwegian security police had asked her whether her brother had placed calls from Nairobi, including from the Westgate mall, during the siege. She said that he had not and that the family was unaware of any role he might have played in the attack. But with grades that fell short of medical school requirements, the young man, Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, struggled to find a job after high school and began visiting radical jihadist Web sites. In 2009, he took the first of several long trips back to Somalia.
“My mother and father and me, we don’t even know if he is dead or alive,” she said. “We are waiting for the whole issue to become clearer.” Norwegian investigators now want to know whether the boy who wanted to be a healer grew up to be a killer. They are questioning relatives and friends of Mr. Dhuhulow, 23, to try to determine whether he was one of the four attackers caught on surveillance cameras during the rampage at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, last month, when more than 60 men, women and children were killed.
A spokesman for the Norwegian Police Security Service, Martin Bernsen, said investigators were also unsure whether Mr. Dhuhulow was still alive. Several explosions and a fire at the mall have made it hard to distinguish between the remains of the victims and those of the attackers. The authorities have been unable thus far to identify any of the militants among the bodies pulled from the rubble. The investigators suspect he was the killer whom investigators have been referring to as Black Shirt, seen hustling past a jewelry store firing his rifle; stalking a wounded man desperately trying to hide in the grocery store; and limping with a bandage below his left knee, his lower leg soaked in blood.
Johansen Oduor, the chief Kenyan government pathologist, said that remains believed to belong to three of the attackers had been pulled from the rubble on Thursday and taken to the Nairobi City Mortuary, but that identification would probably require advanced forensics, including DNA testing. “The bodies are charred,” Dr. Oduor said. “There’s no face. There’s no clothes.” An official familiar with the investigation in Norway confirmed that the Police Security Service had been keeping track of Mr. Dhuhulow since he was a student at Thor Heyerdahl High School, near where he grew up. NRK, the Norwegian state broadcaster, quoted police sources as saying that he had been in contact with central figures of a Norwegian-based Islamist group, Profetens Ummah, or the Prophet’s Community of Believers.
“There are body parts,” he said, “and with body parts it’s difficult to tell” even how many attackers there were. TV 2 in Norway reported that Mr. Dhuhulow had been active in an online forum linked to the Shabab and posted photographs of “martyrs” killed in Bosnia. On one site, TV 2 reported, his profile picture was a suicide bomber.
The remains were recovered next to AK-47 rifles, the same kind of firearms the attackers were seen carrying in footage from security cameras in the mall. Kenyan security forces do not use that make of rifle. “If you are found next to an AK, most likely you are one of the attackers,” Dr. Oduor said. The local newspaper Ostlands-Posten quoted an unnamed former classmate as saying that in high school Mr. Dhuhulow was looking at “odd Web sites,” including more than one about “liquidating” American soldiers. The newspaper reported that several former classmates had recognized his gait and his hand gestures in the video footage.
A man with the same name as Mr. Dhuhulow was arrested in Somalia in connection with the murder of a radio journalist but was freed by a military tribunal for lack of evidence in March. Mr. Dhuhulow’s sister, speaking on the condition that her name not be given, said in an interview here in Larvik: “It’s still hard to believe. I can’t bear the thought of this actually being true. It’s just too much to come to terms with.”
In 2009, Mr. Dhuhulow began going on what his sister called “long vacations” to Somalia. Contact with the family was sporadic, and she could not remember whether she had last spoken to him last year or the year before. “My brother leads a different life than me,” she said. She said that officers from the Police Security Service had asked her whether her brother had placed calls from the Westgate mall during the siege. She said that he had not and that the family was unaware of any role he might have played.
A family member told the BBC that he had called this summer and said he was in trouble. She said she did not believe her brother could have taken part in the attack on Westgate and could not say she recognized him from the video. “My mother and father and me, we don’t even know if he is dead or alive,” she said.
The Norwegian Police Security Service said in a statement last week that it had received information that a Norwegian citizen of Somali origin may have been involved in “the planning and execution of the attack” in late September, when militants stormed the mall and killed more than 60 men, women and children. The Norwegians sent investigators to Nairobi to work with Kenyan security services on the investigation. Although a person of interest in the case, Mr. Dhuhulow may yet prove to have had no connection to the attack.
The Somali militant group known as the Shabab has claimed responsibility for the assault. The Kenyan authorities initially said 10 to 15 assailants had been involved. Officials with knowledge of the investigation now say the number was no more than six and may have been as few as the four captured on the surveillance tapes. The Police Security Service said in a statement on Friday that it had “not yet been determined whether a named Norwegian citizen actually took part in the attack or not.” But the statement added, “Based on the information that we have uncovered this far in the investigation, however, the suspicion of his involvement has been strengthened.”
Kenyan officials released four names, but none of them was Mr. Dhuhulow’s; officials with knowledge of the investigation said later that the released identities were believed to be noms de guerre, not birth names. A man with the same name as Mr. Dhuhulow was arrested in Somalia in connection with the killing of a radio journalist but was freed by a military tribunal for lack of evidence in March.
As recently as last week, investigators were still referring to the attackers as “pink shirt, white shirt, black shirt, blue shirt,” based on the clothes they were seen wearing in surveillance footage. Mr. Dhuhulow is believed to be the militant in the black shirt who was filmed in a grocery store, his left pant leg soaked in blood. The devastating siege of Westgate shocked not just Kenya but the entire region, from Ethiopia to Tanzania, prompting worries of more attacks abroad by the Shabab or the group’s local affiliates. In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, extra police officers were at checkpoints and guarded shopping malls on Friday after warnings of an attack.
Norway has increasingly come into focus as investigators from Kenya, the United States, Norway and elsewhere work to piece together the Shabab’s international network. Navy SEALs staged an unsuccessful raid in the Somali coastal town of Baraawe this month to try to capture a Shabab planner, Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, also known as Ikrima. Mr. Abdikadir is believed to have lived in Norway as an asylum seeker between 2004 and 2008. The ripples of fear and incomprehension have now spread all the way to this idyllic community of about 43,000 people on Norway’s east coast, with its small white wooden houses and a harbor full of bobbing sailboats. Residents have begun to question how their town could be a cradle of Islamist militancy. The questions are especially poignant for those who came to Norway as refugees precisely to get away from such violence and to give opportunities to children like Mr. Dhuhulow.
“When we investigate one Norwegian involved, we are interested in his connections,” Mr. Bersen said. “The Somali community in Larvik is in shock,” said Mohammed, a postal worker who visited the mosque here on Friday and, like many fearing repercussions for speaking out, gave only his first name.
More and more video footage of the attack has leaked out in the weeks since the siege ended. Disturbing new clips released on Thursday showed terrified shoppers running for their lives while the killers stalked them, leaving victims in pools of blood on the mall floors. Mr. Dhuhulow grew up in a multiethnic neighborhood, in a four-story apartment building with 32 units and families from half a dozen countries.
Mr. Dhuhulow’s sister said the police believed that he had called the family from inside the mall, a version of events she contested. “They think so because it said so in some Kenyan newspaper,” she said. “They do not have this information confirmed. He certainly did not call anyone in the family; we would have known if he did.” Tone Olafsen, 59, the vice president of the building’s board, remembered when the family moved in. She said she had spent time with the family and always had a positive impression of Mr. Dhuhulow. “He was a quiet, polite, good-humored, pleasant and nice kid,” Ms. Olafsen said.
Larvik is a small city on the Norwegian east coast south of Oslo, with around 43,000 residents. Mr. Dhuhulow attended Thor Heyerdahl High School here until 2009, according to Stine Indhal, an administrator at the school, concentrating on natural sciences and mathematics. Norway has increasingly come into focus in the inquiry into the Westgate attack, as investigators from Kenya, the United States, Norway and elsewhere work to piece together the Shabab’s international network. Navy SEALs staged an unsuccessful raid in Baraawe, a Somali coastal town, this month to try to capture a Shabab planner, Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, also known as Ikrimah. Mr. Abdikadir is believed to have lived in Norway as an asylum seeker between 2004 and 2008.
Norway’s TV2 reported that Mr. Dhuhulow was active in an online forum linked to the Shabab and posted photographs of “martyrs” killed in Bosnia. On one site, TV2 reported, he used a suicide bomber as his profile picture. Lars Akerhaug, the author of “Norwegian Jihad,” said that the free-speech laws in Norway made it particularly easy for militant recruiters to operate.
The local newspaper Ostlandsposten quoted an unnamed former classmate as saying that in high school he was surfing “odd Web sites,” including ones about “liquidating” American soldiers. “If you want a base in Europe, it makes sense to do it here because there’s a smaller chance of being prosecuted here than in a place like Britain or Germany that has stricter terrorism laws,” Mr. Akerhaug said. He pointed out that there were Shabab representatives in Oslo andin Gothenburg, Sweden, and that around 10 Norwegians were known to be fighting for the Shabab.
The newspaper reported that several former classmates recognized him in the video footage from both his gait and his hand gestures. “I remember him as fanatical when it came to Islam,” a classmate told the newspaper. “I remember him reading a lot of Web sites about Allah and about his religion.” More and more scenes of the attack have leaked out in the weeks since the siege ended. Disturbing new clips released on Thursday showed terrified shoppers running for their lives while the killers, including Black Shirt, stalked them, leaving victims in pools of blood on the mall floors.
The Norwegian state broadcaster NRK quoted police sources as saying that the Police Security Service had kept track of Mr. Dhuhulow since high school and that he was in contact with central figures of a Norwegian-based Islamist group, Profetens Ummah, or the Prophet’s Ummah. Confirmation of the attackers’ identities could come from the scorched remains of two or possibly three people found near AK-47 rifles and pulled from the rubble of the mall on Thursday. Identification of the charred partial remains will require advanced forensics, including DNA testing, according to Johansen Oduor, the chief Kenyan government pathologist.
Kristina Sandbrekkene Olsen, 22, who went to the school at the same time as Mr. Dhuhulow but did not remember him specifically, said she had many Muslim friends from Chechnya and Kosovo as well as Somalia. “Terrorism was never a topic among any of us, and religion wasn’t a big subject, either,” Ms. Olsen said. “There’s no face,” Dr. Oduor said in an interview. “There’s no clothes.” But, he noted, “if you are found next to an AK, most likely you are one of the attackers.” Kenyan security forces do not use that kind of rifle.
According to his sister, Mr. Dhuhulow stayed in touch with the family in Norway only occasionally after moving to Somalia. “It’s still hard to believe,” she said. “I can’t bear the thought of this actually being true. It’s just too much come to terms with.”

Henrik Pryser Libell reported from Larvik, and Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya. Josh Kron contributed reporting from Nairobi.

Henrik Pryser Libell reported from Larvik, and Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya.