African press review 27 September 2013

We take our cue from Kenya where Friday’s papers talk of finger-pointing and embarrassing security lapses in connection with the deadly Westgate mall terrorist attack that killed 67 people.

The Nation reports that it had established that a lack of clear command lines badly affected the response to the terrorist attack. According to the paper its own inquiries indicate that a coordinated rescue mission was badly delayed because of disputes between the Kenya Police and KDF officers commanding their units on the ground.

The paper points to a reconstruction of the rescue mission which indicates that a team from the Recce General Service Unit of the Kenya Police early in the rescue operation made its way into the mall and secured most of it, pinning down the terrorists at one end of the supermarket. However, the team reportedly pulled out after its commander was fatally shot in ‘friendly fire’ following the arrival of a KDF unit. The Nation believes it is the pull out that created the vacuum which apparently allowed the terrorists to regroup and move through the mall slaughtering many captures.

Standard Digital tells the extraordinary story of a man who claims that a duck into a meat cold room saved his life. The paper also holds in an editorial, that too many questions continue to linger over the terrorist attack on Westgate. For the paper, it is not good enough for the grieving country to be told that many similar planned attacks have been detected and nipped in the bud.

South Africa’s Mail and Guardian is monitoring the hunt for the so-called White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite. The paper says that that the South African passport allegedly used by the wanted woman to enter Kenya was cancelled in 2011. The paper also reports that despite Lewthwaite’s reputation as the wife of the London sub-way bomber Germaine Lindsay she managed to rent a property and took loans during her stay in South Africa.

StandardDigital also sounds what is describes as a warning salvo to Deputy Kenyan President William Ruto by Fatou Bensouda, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Bensouda issued a statement on Thursday warning Ruto that he risked arrest if he skips any trial proceedings without the permission of the judges. The Kenyan Vice President was authorized by the ICC to return to home from The Hague after the outbreak of the terrorist crisis which

The Nation reports that Kenya is on the verge of becoming an oil producing country after British firm Tullow Oil announced on Thursday that it had discovered a 4th well along the Rift Basin in the northern part of the country. In July, the company raised its oil resource estimate for Kenya by 20 per cent from 250 million barrels to 300 million barrels of oil, following the latest well discoveries, according to the newspaper.

In Liberia, there are few comments on the ICC’s sentencing to 50 years in prison of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. The Democrat recalls that Taylor now aged 65 was found guilty of arming Sierra Leone’s RUF rebels who killed 120,000 people in a civil war notorious for mutilations, drugged child soldiers and sex slaves in a trade off for blood diamonds mined with slave labour, according to the Democrat.