Terrorists planned long ago to take down Westgate Mall, even starting a Facebook page for the public eight days before the real attack.
The shocking page, started September 13 and with no address or location on it might have been opened by the terrorists or an affiliated Kenyan or just anyone to drive public activity and confuse intelligence into the attack and probably cause terror and fear among Kenyans. The Westgate Mall siege was carried on September 21, a few minutes to noon.
The terrorists propaganda page claims it was”Providing the secret eye. Collecting Info From Kenyans Online And Sharing.Views Not Independent.”
It adds, “We have a system we call open source intelligence collection system where we collect all terrorist feeds and digets them into a database. Every info posted online by terrorists or that refers to terror is picked and we conduct-onspot intel charting and analysis. Its only after connecting the info to terror groups and sympathizers online that we post info.”
and uganda expected to carry out attacks in the next 24 hours! # westgate # AlShabaab Expanded Eye our fighters had intense training at black water facility in north carolina! and were expecting more! #westgate # AlShabaabcrawler.”
The page also said,”Al Shabaab turns to Communicating via E-mail as @Twitter engages them in an online war suspending all accounts with “HSM”.”
Our questions at TechMoran and as Kenyans remain unanswered. Could be a Kenyan somewhere trying to increase hits to his or her Facebook page or is it run by Al-Qaeda insiders? After a close scrutiny, we realized Facebook had no history on name change and the page’s URL remains the same.
Another Terrorism blog goes ahead to name the perpetrators and their places of origin but we rather ask Kenyans to keep off this dirty tricks. Did the terrorists start the page days before the raid? Or is it just a hooligan out to garner likes to his/her page then change its name? Are the master-minders walking free among us?