Umoja Owiti’s compound
Outside El Wak
The four blades atop the Eurocopter EC175 were spinning idly when the Falcon boarded. Umoja Owiti had ordered his staff to paint over the aircraft’s blue-and-gold exterior markings as a precaution even though he knew the chances of any governmental agency noticing the aircraft were slim. Neither Kenya nor its neighbors had radar equipment that reached into the lawless North Eastern Province along the Kenya-Somalia border where the levels of poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment were among the highest in Africa and a major contributor to crime, insecurity, and alienation. Mandera, the province’s largest city with 40,000 residents, was legally part of Kenya but was actually governed by local clans.
As soon as Owiti bid his guest good-bye, the helicopter headed north. It touched down a few miles outside the city where a Toyota pickup, six men, and a wooden crate had assembled. The Falcon instructed the pilots to wait for him as he exited to greet his men.
Now that he had arrived, the crate was opened and as the Falcon watched, each of the six men stepped forward, removed a suicide belt from the box, and strapped it around his waist. Next, each claimed an AK-47, the most prevalent assault rifle in the world.
“Today we will strike a blow against the sons of Zion, the worshippers of the Cross, and betrayers of Allah,” the Falcon declared. “Today, you will teach the world that our enemies, who support America, the head of infidelity and the symbol of aggression and tyranny in the world, will be punished by our Lord and Master, Allah, blessed be His name.”
The men chanted in unison. “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”
“Do not be deceived, my brothers,” the Falcon continued. “America is leading a Crusader campaign to fight Islam. It is poking its head where it does not belong, bringing behind it an alliance of the Crusaders and their apostate agents. The head of the infidel’s beast is America, but before we destroy it, we must remove its limbs.”
“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”
The young men had formed a circle around the Falcon. Each man placed his arms on the shoulders of the man next to him and swayed as if they were football players in a huddle, all the while quietly repeating: “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.”
“The West will call you ‘suicide bombers’ because their media is controlled by Jews who by their birth are ignorant and liars.”
“Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.”
“You are fedayeen. You will not kill yourselves today. That would be blasphemy. You will kill our enemies in battle and for your fidelity and sacrifice, Muhammad has promised you a vast reward in paradise.”
“Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.”
“Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah,” the Falcon said, quoting from the Quran, “be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.”
“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” The men’s voices were growing louder as they became more excited.
“Let us remember the teachings of the Ayatollah Khomeini who said, ‘the purest joy in Islam is to kill and be killed for Allah!’”
Next came another quote, this one from the Hadith, which is a collection of the teachings by the Prophet Muhammad.
“Nobody who enters Paradise will return to this world, even if he were offered everything on the surface of the earth, except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed ten times for the sake of the great honor that has been bestowed upon him.”
At this point, the men released their arms from each other and the Falcon stepped from one to the next, embracing each and handing him a red-and-white-checkered kaffiyeh, to cover his face.
“Allah be with you!” he declared.
The Falcon returned to the Eurocopter, while the men boarded the Toyota truck and sped toward Mandera.
Twenty minutes later, the terrorists reached the Technological Processes College campus, which consisted of five modest buildings inside a two-block area encircled by eight-foot-high mud walls. The college had only one street entrance, which was protected by two unarmed sentries. Both men were leaning with their backs against a wall in metal folding chairs, smoking Rooster brand cigarettes, the cheapest in Kenya, when the Toyota approached them. There was no gate at the entrance, no door, simply a gap between the walls under a corrugated metal canopy that contained the school’s name.
When the Toyota reached the campus, its driver swerved off the street and drove directly into the opening between the mud walls, effectively blockading it. While he was doing this, an Al-Shabaab fighter riding in the truck’s bed fired a burst from his AK-47, killing both of the startled guards and causing chickens wandering nearby to squawk and scatter.
Leaping from the vehicle, that same jihadist again fired his rifle, this time at the Toyota’s front and back tires, turning it into even more of a barricade.
The sounds of gunfire and the sudden appearance of six gunmen racing into the campus courtyard caused an immediate panic. Students seated on the ground and strolling between their morning classes ran into the nearest school building—a four-story dormitory. Al-Shabaab had murdered 148 people during an attack at Garissa University College in 2015 and two years prior to that massacre had killed 67 and wounded 175 during a mass murder attack inside a Nairobi shopping mall.
The attack leader stood in the center of the dirt courtyard while his five comrades gave chase inside the dormitory. Within minutes, terrified students were being herded from the building back into the courtyard with their fingers clasped together behind their heads. Some two hundred students were soon forced to lay helpless on the ground—their clothing creating a patchwork of rainbow colors under the morning sun. The terrorists walked among them like shepherds controlling sheep.
“Allahu Akbar!” the leader shouted and then in Swahili, the official language of Kenya, he yelled, “Who here is Muslim?”
Having heard the terrorist praising Allah, all of the students immediately raised their hands.
“What? There are no Christians here?” the leader shouted in an incredulous voice. Reaching down, he grabbed the shoulder of a female student wearing a hijab and jerked her to her feet. “Are you a Muslim?”
The terrified woman answered: “Yes!”
Pressing the barrel of his AK-47 against her temple, he said, “Recite for me a verse from the Holy Quran.”
“Allah and His angels send blessings on the Prophet.”
Lowering his rifle, he said, “Sister, you may go.”
But she didn’t move.
“Leave!” he yelled. “Or I will shoot you!”
She glanced around, clearly frightened and uncertain what to do. Then she bolted toward the school’s main gate, which was blocked by the Toyota. Everyone watched her running, unsure if the attackers would shoot her. But she reached the disabled truck and escaped out the opening by climbing over its hood and roof since there was no room on either side of it for her to pass through.
The Al-Shabaab terrorist ordered another student to stand. “Tell me a scripture,” he ordered.
“Allah sends blessings on the Prophet,” the man said, repeating exactly what he had heard the now freed woman proclaim.
“You think me a fool? A different one,” the gunman demanded.
The student didn’t reply and the gunman fired a single round into his head, spraying the students lying on the ground near them with blood and bits of brain. Several coeds screamed.
“Quiet!” he yelled.
His next target was a sobbing male, whom he ordered to stand.
“Muslim?”
“Yes,” the student answered in a shaky voice.
By now it had become obvious that having every Muslim student in the courtyard quote a different scripture would be impossible. The Christians hiding among them would simply repeat whatever verse they’d overheard.
“What separates Sunnis and Shiites?” the terrorist demanded.
“Sunnis followed Abu Dakr, the Prophet’s advisor. Shiites followed Ali, the Prophet’s cousin. This is the difference between them.”
It was the correct answer, but rather than freeing the student, the gunman pointed his AK-47 at a woman lying close by.
“Muslim?”
The male student looked at her horrified face and then at the gunman threatening him. “I don’t know her,” the student said.
The gunman stepped back and fired, killing the male student, who fell dead.
“Any Muslim who is not with us is our enemy,” the jihadist declared. “Do not act as if you don’t know these infidels. If you betray your faith and your people, you will share their fate.” He pointed his rifle at another male student and ordered him to stand.
“Are you a follower of the Cross?”
“No,” the student replied. Without being asked, he hollered in a loud voice, “Allah has full knowledge of all things, chapter thirty-three, verse forty-one. Allahu Akbar!”
Convinced, the terrorist aimed his rifle at the same woman on the ground that he’d asked about earlier. “Is she a Muslim?”
“No, Christian,” the student answered.
The gunman fired several shots into her. Now that he had found an informant, he began moving more quickly from student to student.
“Yes,” the informant would declare. “No.”
His declaration meant either freedom or death. Muslims being culled from the others were permitted to run toward the blocked gate, leaving the corpses of Christians behind. Two of the other terrorists plucked informants from their captors to assist them in identifying targets. The carnage continued. Fearing the inevitable, a Christian student leaped up and ran, only to be cut down by gunfire before reaching the Toyota.
More than two dozen students had been slaughtered when a Mandera policeman who’d arrived outside the walls and positioned himself near the Toyota fired at the Al-Shabaab leader overseeing the killings. His bullet hit the terrorist in his face. The Muslim informant assisting him froze as the terrorist’s head literally exploded.
Before the policeman could fire again, the five remaining terrorists dropped to their knees as if they were praying. The Falcon had given them instructions. Do not fight or run when the police arrive. It was time for them to kill themselves.
Time seemed to slow in the courtyard. The students around the masked assailants began jumping up to escape, which made it difficult for the police now entering the courtyard to fire at the terrorists without risking hitting the fleeing students. In the midst of this confusion, the five assailants detonated their suicide vests.
The deafening boom, boom, boom, boom was followed by thousands of projectiles flying in every direction, maiming and killing anyone in their paths. Sounds of students crying in agony filled the blood-soaked courtyard.
A police car rammed into the back of the Toyota blocking the gate and pushed it into the courtyard, freeing the opening for police officers and an ambulance crew to enter. Pushing behind them were dozens of men and women who had heard about the slaughter and were related to students. Some were carrying hoes, picks, and machetes as weapons to fight the attackers.
As they raced between the wounded and dead, they discovered one of the terrorists was alive. His vest had not exploded and the students who’d jumped up around him had inadvertently protected him from the sprays of shrapnel from his comrade’s vests.
He was shoved to the ground and about to be murdered when a policeman interceded. He warned that the vest wrapped around the terrorist’s waist might still explode and that drove the angry mob away from the terrorist long enough for the police to take charge of him.
A military helicopter flew him to Nairobi for questioning and to make certain he was not killed by the families of those murdered.