BY SAM ALFAN.
A Magistrate has allowed police to continue detaining five terror suspects in connection with the recent terrorist attack at Dusit Hotel in Nairobi.
Senior Principal Magistrate Martha Mutuku detained the suspects for 30 days to allow police to complete investigations.
This after the office of Director Public Prosecutions through Principal Prosecutor Duncan Ondimu and Eddy Kadebe applied for detention of Joel Nganga Wainaina, Oliver Kanyango Muthee, Gladys Kaari Justus, Guleid Abdihakim (Canadian) and Osman Ibrahim who are alleged to be linked to the attackers.
The prosecution said that the attack led to the death of 21 people including foreign nationals.
The suspects were arrested due to their possible involvement in aiding and abetting the terror attack that took place on 15 and 16th this month at the said hotel complex at Riverside, Nairobi.
Wainaina is believed to be a taxi driver and was arrested late on 16 around MP Shah hospital. Muthee was arrested on 17.
The court heard that Gladys who is an M-pesa agent was arrested on 16th in Maua, Meru County.
The fourth suspect, Abdihakim who is a Canadian national was arrested in Suncity area in Nairobi.
Ibrahim was also arrested on 17th at Two Rivers Mall in Kiambu County.
According to the police, during the ongoing investigations, several electronic gadgets were recovered and are currently being forensically examined and the report is yet to be obtained and analysed.
The detectives say the investigations are complex and require additional time and involves a number of agencies and extends to other jurisdictions.
The state believes that the five have other associates who are yet to be apprehended and the the arrests are being vigorously pursued by security agents both in and out of the country.
According to an affidavit by ATPU Inspector Monica Githaiga the assailants were driving a motor vehicle KCN 340E at the time they committed the attack by shooting sporadically.
Upon searching the said vehicle, policed recovered a mobile phone make tecno macron with a safaricom line, Nokia phone without a line, extremely damaged laptop make HP litbook black on colour.
Upon investigations, it was discovered that the ID used to register the said safaricom line has also been used to register 11 other lines.
“My team and I received reports that some of the attackers resided in a house in Mucatha in Ruaka and they were Ali Salim Gichunge alias Foruk and Violet Kemunto Omuoyo,” says Githaiga.
It was also established that Gichunge had three mobile phone numbers while Kemunto has six registered phone numbers and the team of investigators are currently in the process of obtaining call data records for the above numbers and carrying out analysis of the same.
“A quick perusal of the above numbers, they were in constant communication with several phone numbers located in Somalia,” says the inspector.
The police are currently in the process of interviewing other taxi drivers, forensically examining the car of the first suspect Wainaina, his financial records, his call data records, whether he has an operation base for the said taxi or owns the car.
Investigations carried out so far show that on the day of the attack, Wainaina was driving the vehicle KBR 243D and he did drive to the scene with one of the attackers who was killed.
The second suspect Muthee has given contradictory information as how he moved from his alleged base at Gigiri to the point of attack. The team further added that it emerged that on 12th January, the second suspect was at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and claims he was taking some of his clients to the airport.
“There is need to interview his alleged workmate who operates taxi around Gigiri, verify who he was taking to the airport on that date, forensically examine his vehicle which was at the scene of attack, financial records and call data,” said the Investigator.
