He chose to join a terrorist group, fought for it, was blooded in atrocities, escaped and repented. Now he lives in well-founded fear for his life.
Not least because the day after al-Shabaab militants attacked the Dusit Hotel complex in Nairobi, the former al-Shabaab fighter we’ll call “Musa” realized he had met one of the terrorists, seven years earlier, in Somalia.
Ali Salim Gichunge, a thick-set Kenyan militant, was caught on security camera footage during the 20-hour attack on the Dusit and was killed alongside three other gunmen by Kenyan special forces. Authorities have since arrested a number of people allegedly connected to Gichunge.
But Musa’s identification of Gichunge is the first public evidence that links the Kenyan attacker to Somalia.
Musa said Gichunge was a member of the feared Amniat, al-Shabaab’s internal security service, and that he met him in Baidoa, central Somalia, in 2012.
Musa’s descriptions of the town, and video evidence he had of his time in al-Shabaab, were examined by CNN and proved beyond doubt that his claims to have been a fighter in Somalia were legitimate. Gichunge, wearing a baseball cap on backwards, is clearly visible in CCTV footage released to the media after the attack.
“I was shocked. When I saw the CCTV I said ‘I know that guy!'” Musa told CNN in an exclusive interview. While in Somalia, Musa said he was subjected to a “jovial” interrogation over lunch by Gichunge.
“They’ll eat with you but they are just interrogating you: ‘How do you love al-Shabaab? How did you come here? Why did you join al-Shabaab?’
“That sort of question, but we knew he’s interrogating us,” Musa said.
He added that anyone failing such a “test” by Amniat agents like Gichunge would be imprisoned for months — or worse.
Many of the most radicalized al-Shabaab volunteers were fighters who had converted from Christianity, he added, including Gichunge.