The question of keeping the survivors on a tight leash first arose during the siege. I am almost sure you did raise it at some point if not somebody else (here or at choo.com). Interviews took place during the siege - (which I have condemned as a huge mistake because an average Somali follows BBC and by extrapolation the Somali terrorists inside the death hostels could have followed the stories about hiding students on mobile-phones).
Then came the clamp down when all the survivors were all taken to Nairobi ostensibly for counselling. After emerging from there, their testimonies have been mechanical and almost coached (my personal subjective opinion). Stories of feeding on cosmetics, or is it lady gay to survive have been sold to British tabloids and many are now "famous". I smell a stinking rat! Could Tony Blair be earning his cash at last???
Contacting the 166: Here you make some assumptions. You take it for granted that everybody knows who these people are and that they have bona fide families with addresses that one can contact. You are getting in to the Garlic logic.
First of all if nobody is coming forward to ask for the whereabouts of the missing students then it should raise red flags rather than have a calming effect. It would be suggesting that:
(a) The missing have no guardians / parents
(b) The guardians / parents care nothing or have not heard of the tragedy
(c) The said missing were "ghost" students to milk the system
(d) They were an advance Al Shabaab "sleeper" squad.Secondly, it is the duty and responsibility of the security forces to scan through the admission and contact data of the students and verify the information. This must be done for ALL the GUC students and lecturers - not just the missing. A crime has been committed and the possible accomplices remain unknown. It could also be any of the lecturers, the subordinate staff or neighbors. I can volunteer to do the screening for free.
Is this a conspiracy theory? Nope! The difference between what I am saying and a conspiracy theory is that I am asking questions and making suggestions about what could have been done and what can still be done. I am NOT alleging inconceivables and the raving loony tales such as:
GoK staged this and then covered it up and that it actually happened in 2001 and this was just a hollywood show staged and acted in Garissa to get the President of Turkey to accuse the Pope of genocide. These are suggestions to
improve security not undermine it.
BTW nobody imagines this is the last attack. Nothing has changed and nothing is changing which means more such grisly attacks will be attempted. We all have to chip in. Who know, it could be your church next!
I did not create the figure 166. GoK did. They have subsequently tried to reduce it by upping the number of students rescued. I have addressed the discrepancies in detail elsewhere. vooke, I have studied matters of security as part of my job and I can assure you
missing anything is very important and leads to sleepless nights.
1. A missing car for example could return booby trapped;
2. A missing staff member may return dressed up in a suicide vest;
3. A missing photocopier could be "found" with explosives, listening devices and hostile human or snake inside, etc. My plea remains that not enough attention has been paid to a crucial part of the attack. Important information to be used in future to prevent the attacks may be lost.
For example, if they found that the "theory" of advance sleeper squads is real, then a quiet screening of ALL colleges and universities could save lives.
The college admin gave the figure of the enrolled and present and added nothing.
I don not agree with the claim that Al Shabaab uses few attackers. The last video of Mpeketoni shows a very large group. We have no idea if that was the only group. They had enough time to bury their dead (a grave that remains untraced to date - unless GoK has kept it secret). They bring their own media crew and obviously a lot of support staff.
From what we learned of the Westgate attack; the organizers left for Somalia once the attack began. The others hovered around for a while before also escaping leaving behind suicide bombers to create a diversion while the main group escaped.
I have no idea nor can I speculate where the 166 are. I have already provided several scenarios (scroll up) which include ghost students.
I do not share Alai's view on mass burials. I posted it somewhere to irritate the irritable
Omorlo,
How many survivors of this attack do we have?
Are we saying that they are all on a tight leash? Why can't activists approach them if we don't trust the media seeing it is compromised.
I have asked you this question before;
How hard is it to contact the 166 families of the missing? Add to this the survivors and their families. Surely they would know by now who died and who survived. This is a school after all, a close community. On the contrary I have watched several clips of survivors interviewed.
You have every right to mistrust authorities but taking this too far leads you down the same rabbit hole as Auntie Hubris and his neo-con-Zionist conspiracies.
While we may berate the medi for not aksin 'hard' questions such as these, I also blame them for not pinning the proponents of the 166-missing-students theories. How did they arrive at the figure? Do they have the names? What is the college administration saying? And so forth
A mass burial as imagined by Alai of 166 would lead to some serious murmuring. How can 166 families be silenced with their missing kids and missing bodies and GoK indifference? Mass kidnapping theory too has weaknesses. Where would you take them at night and using what means? And your accomplices theory as well. An attack involving over 100 students is hard to imagine. In ALL Al shabab attacks, they have involved far fewer fighters. Now imagine over 100 students sleepers?
