[SIZE=7]Violet Kemunto: Unmasking wife of key terror suspect in Riverside attack[/SIZE]
By Ian Omondi For Citizen Digital
https://3dwnh01icn0h133s00sokwo1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/themes/citizennews_new/images/vida-clock-icon.png Published on: January 17, 2019 20:18 (EAT)
https://3dwnh01icn0h133s00sokwo1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/kemunto1.png
Violet Kemunto, who is alleged to have been married to one of the suspects of the 14 Riverside terror attack, Ali Salim. PHOTO | COURTESY
In Summary
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[li]The woman identified as Violet Kemunto Omwoyo is in police custody after she was arrested in Mucatha, Ruaka, Kiambu County at a house where one of the attackers, Ali Salim Gichunge, is said to have been living.[/li][li]Police sources disclosed to Citizen Digital that it had been established that Kemunto was allegedly married to Gichunge for one year.[/li][/ul]
New details continued to emerge about the assailants who staged a terror attack at the 14 Riverside Drive in Nairobi, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others.
Citizen Digital on Thursday obtained an image of the woman said to have been living with one of the main terror suspects in the Riverside attack.
The woman identified as Violet Kemunto Omwoyo is in police custody after she was arrested in Mucatha, Ruaka, Kiambu County at a house where one of the attackers, Ali Salim Gichunge, is said to have been living.
Police sources disclosed to Citizen Digital that it had been established that Kemunto was allegedly married to Gichunge for one year.
The woman, who police are treating as a key suspect, is said to have pursued a degree in Journalism at Masinde Muliro University where she graduated in 2014.
Citizen Digital also understands that Kemunto’s alleged husband, Gichunge, is suspected to have been leading the operation from the outside and providing the terrorists with information during the course of the attack.
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According to police, Gichunge was not among the terror suspects who died at the scene of the attack.
He was also arrested and, upon interrogation, has led the police to arrest nine more suspects while others remain at large in connection with the incident. Gichunge’s mother, Sakina Mariam, is also under police custody.
Gichunge was born in 1995 in Isiolo County where he attended Hekima Primary School before proceeding to Kibiricha Secondary School.
Sources say he could have been the mastermind of the operation as the four gunmen who stormed the Dusit complex on Tuesday afternoon and unleashed fire on innocent civilians are said to have spent the night at his house.
Up until the incident, Gichunge had been living at the Guango Estate, Mucatha, coughing up more than Ksh.40,000 in monthly rent according to police reports shared with Citizen TV.
Officers who stormed house No E9 where the attacker had been living in discovered a hole in which a cache of weapons had been stashed.
A witness who claims to have been living next-door described the attacker as a friendly man who was cordial with his neighbors but was rarely in the house.
The neighbours, however, described Kemunto as a reserved woman who always covered her face with a hijab most of the time. On her WhatsApp profile, Kemunto described herself as an Al-Shabaab bride.