Kenya: Westgate mall attack

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Eyewitnesses remember the Westgate mall attack in Kenya, the 1990s 'miracle water' craze in Mexico, and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. Plus the amazing story of how a journalist revealed the secret romance between Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy, and we look back at the changing nature of James Bond.

Photo: A police officer at the site of the terrorist attack, Westgate Mall, on September 21, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya.. (Photo by Jeff Angote/Nation Media/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson.
0:04.9	Each week with the help of dedicated history buffs we bring the past to life in the company of people who were there.
0:11.5	This week, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
0:14.7	Every 10 minutes he needed to vomit.
0:17.3	Sasha started to develop different symptoms, diarrhea, stomach ache from healthy men.
0:24.0	It was just like an absolutely ruined person.
0:27.5	Also how Aristotle Onasis secretly romanced Jackie Kennedy.
0:31.5	Donasis with women was a gentleman and Jackie was very used to being taken care of.
0:38.3	Plus a 1990s miracle water craze in Mexico and Ian Fleming on the Bond books.
0:45.2	The villains I find extremely difficult people to put one's finger on.
0:48.8	The really good solid villain is a very difficult person to build up I think.
0:53.4	That's all coming up later in the podcast, but we're going to start in Kenya, where in 2013
0:59.3	gunman stormed and occupied a shopping mall in Nairobi.
1:03.4	During the four-day siege, more than 60 people were killed.
1:07.1	It brought home to the world the ongoing threats
1:09.2	from extremist groups in Africa.
1:11.7	Rebecca Kespi has been looking at this story and is with me now, Rebecca.
1:15.0	Yes, sadly, it wasn't the first time Kenya had been targeted in a major terror attack.
1:20.0	There'd been several in fact, not least of course that devastating bomb at the US
1:24.8	embassy in Nairobi in 1998 Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for that one
1:30.8	but this attack at the Westgate Shopping Center was claimed by
1:35.3	Al-Shabaab and it was the nature I think of this attack on the shopping center
	...

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