archive
Many Kenyans are firm in their belief that Baba Giddy played a major role in misleading the leader of the official opposition Uhuru Kenyatta into entering the history books for all the wrong reasons.
But today I want to tell you a story. Before I tell the story, let me mention the fact that on several occasions last year readers left comments here saying that Uhuru should not be held accountable for the sins of his father. Hold on to that thought for a moment and enjoy the following tale first.
Joel was a master of the musical instrument called a lead guitar. He was a professional musician, which in Africa mostly means a life of struggle where you do it mostly because it is something you really love. And Joel loved the guitar. His fans said that the guy could “talk” for hours on end with his guitar as his slim fingers rapidly flew across the electrified wires, sometimes caressing them they way you would a woman and at other times slapping them into line violently. But whatever he did, he did with a passion.
Joel had just one son whose name was Baraka. Baraka hated his father with a passion and all that he stood for. And with good reason. He had grown up watching his mother struggle to put food on the table as his father entertained and enjoyed life at clubs all over...
Read more
WHY BUY 10, 20 or 30 COMPUTERS WHEN 1,2OR3 WILL DO? DO MORE WITH LESS!!! NO NEED OF CLONES, GENERICS OR REFURBISHED COMPUTERS ANY MORE
Expand on your existing Office or Home PC by simply adding the NComputing terminals for every user (up to 30 users per PC). This amazing and cost effective technology will save up to 70% on PC procurement and 95% of power consumption. Share applications with all connected users simultaneously. Install out of the box in minutes!!! Visit our website: www.pneumaticskenya.com
All you need To Make Big Money Online while still in Kenya is an email address and a mobile phone
How To Make Serious Money Using Blogs Or Generate Plenty Of Traffic For Your Site. It Is So Easy, Expert Explains
Nice story poorly told. Between Joel and Baraka who is the father and son in your paragraph two. As they say poor characterizatio and dull atmosphere spoils even the most scintitlating narative.
ReplyDeleteThat said you are spot on. In our collective psyche as Kenyans THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS. Look around you and see our present idols whose main asset is wealth. Our mentality and phislosophy in life reads HELL for LEATHER. Poor Baraka he missed the economic growth.
We have become serial (or is it infectious) political record breakers. After the son of Jomo saw the light not to take the unpaved path, baba Jimmy will crown it all as the first head of state to DEFECT while still in office.
ReplyDeleteWe are surely living in interesting political times. Not that his opponents are any better but surely two wrond never made a right ama ni EXPIDIENCY stupid!
I shudder to imagine what the seating arrangement will be in bunge next week. Where will the leader of OP be? And does he still measure to the name, resposndibility and salary of that office? No rants please for answers, I am honestly blank here.
My greatest fear is that after December Emilio WILL be home but VERY WET poltically. And where does that leave poor Kenya? The chap will have nothing to lose while enslaved to the regional (read tribal) chieftains whose eyes will be singuklarly trained on the election spoils and by extension 2012.
Luka my bro now you see the doom you are staring in your corronation of SAINT in HELL come 2012? I hope that doesn't qualify me as prophet of doom, ama? In the meantime, I am not lonely, enjoying the walk and missing no horse.
PS: Now Derek owes me a DRUM and not pint in apology for 'MALICIOUSLY' dragging my singular asset (name) in murk. He knows my favourite and I am waiting lest he earns a big brother's CURSES, dare you?
For the records my take last week was, and I quote
...."shadow boxing in the name of protecting whoever doesn't need your energy amounts to wasted efforts. Thank God for small mercies obtained in classroom because we can immaculately cloth prejudices in thin abstract gabs. Settle scores if you must but please find a goal first. In the meantime I am not lonely without a horse."
And I still stand by it ready to explain every letter therein. Over to you ndugu Derek.
derek said...
ReplyDeleteArrest who? Chris UTANGOJA. Sana
7:49 AM
Phil said...
Derek, you cant be serious that you can actually defend 'target 1 to 7' in the Kroll Report, can you?
What Chris is saying I believe is short and simple: Let Moi and chronies be made answerable for their crimes against Kenyan people. Let the Justice Ringera do his work with KACC. Let Wako and Tobiko do their jobs. If the court passes a not guilty judgement on Moi and chronies, fair enough. But Derek here cannot purport to be defender, investigator, police and judge. Thats something thats entirely out of this blog. In any case, what comes first. Winning the elections or letting justice prevail now for the benefit of future generations that Chris is talking about???
8:01 AM
derek said...
I have defended the government and I will continue to do that on this corruption issue and more so on the Anglo-Leasing and any other that is alleged to have taken place.
I say, there is no corruption in this government, There is no looted money, and there is no corruption money doings rounds.
Chris, this is to you and I would like to remind you about it. It will be nostalgic to some extent. Research has proven it. Chris in 1992 when the said Goldenberg money was up in the market, the Pattni cash was also doing its rounds, YK92 was liquid, one could feel it. That time Chris, you were in active journalism and you know what I mean by that, there was reaction and from the streets to the houses in the slums, to the pubs and all social places people felt the change.
If there is corruption Chris, unless Central Bank of Kenya is full on dunderheads, then there is that feeling that the business community, companies and individuals could be experiencing. It is true that an economy like Kenya’s reacts to excess money in the market like it did in 1992 and did so in 2001 when Mwau’s 2billion shillings was wired into an account.
Economist Prof Ryan said that an economy like ours will definitely feel an excess 1billion shillings and the immediate thing will be that the stock exchange and banks react and so the knock-on effects. Chris, when IMF and the UN were wiring cash to rebuild Rwanda in the mid-1990s, the Kenyan economy could react for a week after the money had even arrived in Kigali.
The same has been with the Sudan construction issue since last year and the occasional fluctuation that occurs in the country banks and stock market.
If the Narc boys have that money for the elections, then you and I could be feeling it and the dollar rate could be some where around 71 or 70.
8:09 AM
luke said...
Ours is a country where the corrupt are admired for being rich Chris, and anybody who tries to stand up and oppose them is considered foolish for trying to rock the boat, not to mention has a death wish hanging over above their head. tribes are considered to be at their most loyalest or fiercest when it comes to performing their civic duty of protecting one of their own, and this is how good politicians (both current and ex) have become at this game such that nowadays no one needs to rally their tribe to rush to their defence any-more whenever they are in a tight-spot; the tribe will automatically come to their defence without so much as a prompt
In regard to this post Chris,KACC should also be disbanded in its current constitution for being nothing but a Ksh 2 million a month shadow of a toothless bulldog. it never had a mandate(or if it once did, then it certainly lost it) to actually stamp out corruption in Kenya because it was put there just to make the current Government look more credible in the eyes of especially the donors who at the time were needed to institite the Economic recovery strategy. Former governance and ethics PS John Githongo realised as much, and not content to be used as anyone's rubber stamp to give his seal of approval on a non-existent fight against corruption opted to bow out of an aborted campaign platform
Imagine how sad our situation is when 34 million Kenyans believe that they are all pumbavus (like me) and the reason is because they are not eating of the national cake because they are lazy and are busy attending rallies and throwing stones all day. meanwhile IN THE SAME COUNTRY (not somewhere in Canada B. C.) there is someone who can use 1/4 of his estimated wealth to once and for all eradicate slums from our cities, revamp roads infrastructure and deal the death blow to poor health services in our country while still comfortably living his life without sweat
The Kroll report is a must read, and please Chris and Bwana Phil if there are any more reports out there make them available. This is one argument and debate where i have been won over to gladly be lumped as a die-hard supporter of chris and co ruiners
9:28 AM
Taabu said...
When people spew epithets that border on sacrilage we condemn them but when the same is scented in layers of psychophacy we get bewildered. You can import the most expensive horse and take a steep ride the political hill but I won't miss the race. Swearing and sweating only succeed in one thing: DIMINISHING your statue.
But what the heck is in integrity? It is not bankable neither can you stuff it in your belly to replace vitamins. In my book we have names purely for identity purposes but when you battle to measure litterally to a cluster of letter then you earn my sympathy albeit of the less weighty ilk.
Shadow boxing in the name of protecting whoever doesn't need your energy amounts to wasted efforts. Thank God for small mercies obtained in classroom because we can immaculately cloth prejudices in thin abstract gabs. Settle scores if you must but please find a goal first. In the meantime I am not lonely without a horse.
PS: Luke you are such a shameless VILLAGE RUINER. You are hereby re-warned and can you show cause in COLOURS why your peace cannot be rattled? Be original and spefic in your answer please. No generalization of any shade will be entertained.
9:48 AM
Phil said...
Luke, just be patient you will soon read scoops about high level corruption and much more about this regime that Derek tells us is the best in service delivery. You will also hear recordings from very powerful offices. Mos mos.
Hope you watched/read the news this weekend and you learnt what the good Prof. Wangari Maathai said about corruption in Kibaki's regime and how much she is furstrated by it.
Its important we dont contract fake election fever start reacting to posts and comments here rather than effectively respond to them. Thats why I must repeat this from Taabu:
"Shadow boxing in the name of protecting whoever doesn't need your energy (it) amounts to wasted efforts. Thank God for small mercies obtained in (the) classroom because we can immaculately cloth prejudices in thin abstract gabs. Settle scores if you must but please find a goal first. In the meantime I am not lonely without a horse."
10:33 AM
luke said...
ha ha!Mwalimu, just like the Anglo-leasing ghosts,i can't but help engage in general non-specific shadow responses lest i be accused of cyber-bullying!
hata siku hizi unaona ndugu Kalamari amenyamaza kimya lakini nani alimshtaki? lazima hata mimi nikae makini
my prejudices have no halos but it seems when i'm polite i'm a more acceptable hypocrite (with/without the help of my medula oblangata)
11:46 AM
Marianne Briner said...
I have - much to my regret - to agree with some of the comments made up to now. The details of the Kroll Report are not new - they have been issued and published in several Country Reports made by the Foreign Ministries of all Scandinavian countries, Germany, Great Britain, USA etc. in the past (especially since 1990 after Dr. Ouko's death which was directly linked to the corruption and its exposure).
But ....... and here comes my big but .... even the Report by Scotland Yard in 1992 implicating Nicholas Biwott for the killing of Dr. Ouko and its additional suggestion that also the involvement of Daniel arap Moi should be investigated - something John Troon has repeated in very strong words in front of the Sunguh-Committee in February 2005 since for safety reasons he was not allowed to give evidence in Nairobi (which in itself says enough about the former regime and its direct and hired killers ....).
But did anybody take action? - Although there is a 'new' regime in power now? ........ Of course not, the final Report of the Ouko Inquiry did not even see the light of day, i.e. never passed parliament because nobody - and I mean nobody - dared to 'slaughter the holy cow .....' i.e. Moi and his most obidient servant Nicholas Biwott.
So all the people involved in the former and the current corruption can feel safe -- they know what happened - or did not happen - in the past, will also not effect them ........
So why not continue as before? And it is even easier now - the foreign currency restrictions do not exact any more ..... there is free transfer of money and all the banks in the world are more than happy to 'help' ........
And that's why I see no 'tomorrow' ....... nothing will change unless the people change ..... but it's very difficult to tell somebody this who does not know how to pay for his living, the upbringing of his children ..... in one word to 'survive' ........
It is easy to talk and to come out now showing 'surprise' and 'disgust' like Prof. Maathai and many others now do ........ did they not know all this since a long time and kept quiet - why do they talk only now and not before>?????????
Don't allow them the excuse that only because of the 'leaking' of the Kroll Report they have started to open their eyes -------- this Report is known since some years and all the 'learned' people in Kenya knew about it ...........
I better stop now - it makes me really sad to watch this 'theatre' .......
Marianne Briner
12:00 PM
Anonymous said...
Marriane, you are right. I wrote here last week, that this report has been doing rounds. It was presented to the AU in 2004 and this year during the UN/World Bank and IMF quarterly meeting in New York, chaired by now British PM Gordon Brown, the same report was read and the three bodies agreed to pursue all monies in the European banks. I dont know, why none of the papers in Kenya ever wrote the stories. Like the Felicien Kibuga report, that was also ouyt in February and the houses that he has lived in and all his landlords, has never been published. That is at par level with the Kroll report, but no one dares touch it!!!
12:15 PM
Phil said...
Derek are you still defending ama you gave up?
And guys, it doesnt mean that if no action was taken in 2004 or earlier, it means that no action can be taken now. We know there is a lot of things that are 'pending' in this country. You have to appreciate Moi knows which side of the bread is buttered as he maneuvers.
But do Kenyan voters know which side of the bread is buttered?
Anon, please please, e-mail a copy of the Rwandese fugitive report to Chris, he knows how to get it to us. That report is directly connected to a one time long serving Foreign Minister in Kenya and a president wannabe.
12:38 PM
Anonymous said...
anon, just post it at wikileaks
12:47 PM
derek said...
Read that. Sorry, did not indicate my name... Read Zakayo Cheruyiot and the cabal around a presidential candidate...Derek
With his greying hair and old-fashioned spectacles, the man in the photograph resembles an ageing, endearing uncle, incapable of malice. But the face, in police files everywhere, is in fact that of the most notorious war-crimes suspect remaining at large from the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
"It is the friendly face of evil," says Moussa Sanogo, a member of the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), who has spent years hunting him down.
Every morning on his way to his office, Sanogo walks past a wanted poster of the fugitive at the tribunal's headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. He yearns for the day when he can cross out his elusive quarry's face and write "ARRESTED" in capitals over it. "It is my greatest wish," he says. He admits, however, that he may never see the day.
Time is running out for the tribunal to arrest F�licien Kabuga, the 71-year-old millionaire Rwandan financier who was one of the key figures behind the extermination of up to 1m people in Rwanda. The UN security council, which created the court, has ordered it to finish all trials by 2008 and close down. It is starting to wind down this year, having convicted fewer than 30 people since its establishment in the wake of the massacres, and has cost more than $1 billion. Catching Kabuga, its most wanted man, before the 2008 deadline is thus a matter of honour. The surprising thing is that Kabuga continues to evade capture, even though there is little doubt about his hiding place.
All the evidence indicates that he is living comfortably in Kenya, with a personal fortune of close on $100m. His wife, Josephine, lives in Belgium, and most of his children - he has eight daughters and five sons - are in Europe. One daughter lives in Britain. But the task of arresting him is complex, frustrating and dangerous because he enjoys high-level Kenyan protection.
To loosen tongues, the US government put a $5m price on his head in 2002. Many people trying to collect the reward by betraying him have been threatened. One, at least, William Munuhe, has been murdered. In January 2003, Kenyan police and FBI agents found the 27-year-old wheeler-dealer lying on his bed with his eyes gouged out in his house in an up-market suburb of Nairobi.
It looked like a gangland slaying. But this did not stop the police claiming Munuhe's death was suicide. The truth was even more sinister. Within hours, the US ambassador, Johnnie Carson, dramatically revealed that Munuhe had been an FBI informant who was being used by the bureau to lure Kabuga into a trap.
Collaborating with Sanogo's UN investigative team to capture Kabuga for trial for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes in Rwanda, FBI agents had joined forces with about 20 Kenyan police agents to stake out Munuhe's house and seize the Rwandan while he visited it. But someone high up in the Kenyan administration warned Kabuga first. The result was that he never showed. Instead, a day before the ambush, assassins went to the house where they tortured and killed Munuhe - a grim warning to anyone else tempted to betray.
Unable to raise their informant on his mobile phone, the FBI and Kenyan police officers broke in to find his mutilated body on the bed. The room was in chaos, as if from a struggle. Bloodstains were on the floor and his clothing.
Carson said: "Reports that Munuhe was shot in the head by a hit squad are true and regrettable." Since then, two Kenyan policemen who were planning to betray Kabuga have met with accidents. A third has gone into hiding, fearing for his life. And other informants have been threatened, so have fled abroad.
"Of course, now F�licien trusts fewer and fewer people," a friend of the fugitive has said. "But there are still some people who would never go after the money. As far as F�licien is concerned, I would never betray him."
Kabuga's freedom is a glaring example of how international justice continues to escape the people of Rwanda, because there are countries knowingly harbouring wanted war criminals and withholding co-operation from the tribunal. Kenya has shown itself to be one of these. Zimbabwe is another. France is a third. Britain is not blameless either. In December 2006, British officials arrested four Rwandan war-crimes suspects sheltering here. But the arrests only happened after their presence had been exposed in The Sunday Times a year before, when the newspaper drew attention to the fact that Britain was harbouring suspected war criminals.
The Rwandan government has published a list of its 100 most wanted suspects sheltering abroad. They are in countries as diverse as Canada, Norway, France and New Zealand. But none is as important to bring to account as Kabuga. Despite having used his vast wealth to finance the genocide, he is said to remain unrepentant, heading a business empire in East Africa and, it is believed, still using his fortune to fund the remnants of the murderous forces who carried out the genocide. In 1999 they attacked and murdered eight American, British and New Zealand tourists who were visiting the rare mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest on Uganda's border with Congo. There are suspicions, too, that he may be involved in the smuggling of radioactive materials out of Congo via one of his transport companies.
Kenya has not always withheld co-operation from the ICTR. At first the Kenyan authorities co-operated, and in 1997 they arrested about 10 leading g�nocidaires sheltering in Nairobi. But Kabuga was at the top of the ICTR's most-wanted list and was treated differently. Knowing he was protected by Kenyan officials, UN investigators deliberately gave the police only 30 minutes' advance notice of where he was hiding in the city.
It was still enough for him to flee. He was hiding in a house owned by Hosea Kiplagat, a nephew of President Daniel arap Moi and the chairman of one of Kenya's biggest banks. When the investigators arrived, his bed was still warm. He had been whisked away to the house of another business associate and politician. "This was bizarre," said a UN investigator. "He was being protected by the police. He was paying them to guard his house. As he was being guarded by the police, logically he should have been the first to have been arrested by the police. But instead he escaped." An official in the police commissioner's office is suspected of betraying the operation.
"Ever since that time, in spite of denials by the Kenyan authorities, all our intelligence points to Kabuga's regular presence in Kenya," a UN source said. "He quietly manages his chain of commercial activities, and when he travels abroad he uses fake travel documents of different nationalities.
"Since we have been looking for him, he has used so many false names and nationalities. He even had a Kenyan diplomatic passport at one time, and he has at least seven aliases. Kabuga was protected by the former Kenyan regime [of President Daniel arap Moi] and it seems he is protected by the present regime of President Mwai Kibaki. That is why we cannot arrest him in Kenya."
I have never met Kabuga, but the evidence of his handiwork is everywhere you go in Rwanda. Today, the survivors are still unearthing the remains of their families and wondering how it is that the hour of retribution has still not come for the chief financier of the genocide. It was Kabuga who set up the radio station that pumped out the messages of hate that incited the Hutu population to kill the Tutsis. It was his money that bought the machetes they used.
The skulls and bones piled on tables and shelves at memorial sites across Rwanda are a reminder of the thousands of innocent lives lost. "But what is the point of reminders of the horror if Kabuga goes free? His capture would be the triumph of justice over evil," said one survivor.
We were talking at Murambi, a technical college on a hill in southern Rwanda where, in April 1994, about 50,000 Tutsis of the region gathered, having been promised protection by the local mayor. Over the next few days they were slaughtered, thrown into burial pits and covered with quicklime. Today, scores of their bodies, somehow preserved by the lime, are laid out in the classrooms where they died. They are frozen in the last desperate moments of their lives, cradling each other, hands pleading, skulls smashed open by the machetes Kabuga had supplied. One room is filled with the skeletons of babies. In many years of witnessing human suffering, this is one of the most heartbreaking places I have seen, and it was one of the reasons I came to Kenya to gather information on Kabuga.
Having spent a lot of time tracking down and exposing Rwandan war-crimes suspects in Britain, I was puzzled how this key offender had got away. I thought it was the Kenyan government's moral and legal duty to take action. But the Kenyans had not been the only ones protecting him. While in Nairobi, I heard he had once enjoyed the hospitality of a French military attach� and had been invited to a Bastille Day reception.
It was frustrating work, with my few informants afraid of being seen to be talking to me in public. It became plain that Kabuga was going to be caught only if the Kenyan authorities wanted it, and although they have been putting advertisements in the local newspapers asking the public for information, it leads nowhere.
Before the genocide brought the tiny country to international attention, Rwanda was a backwater in Africa, renowned for its beauty and wildlife. Visiting westerners were captivated by the work of the naturalist Dian Fossey and her "gorillas in the mist" - the rare mountain apes she had saved from extinction.
Then, in 13 barbarous weeks in 1994, over 800,000 defenceless citizens were slaughtered when a long-simmering conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis exploded. Most of the dead were the minority Tutsis, and most of those who perpetrated the slaughter were the dominant Hutus. The Tutsis were butchered in their homes, bludgeoned at roadblocks while trying to escape, even herded into churches and burnt to death. In the most sudden and swift massacre of a people in history, an average of 8,000 were hacked to pieces each day as neighbour killed neighbour. Some days, as many as 45,000 were killed.
An extremist Hutu himself, Kabuga used his fortune, status and influence to encourage the blood bath. He allowed his radio station, Mille Collines, to be the "voice of the genocide", inciting Hutus to "kill the Tutsi cockroaches". "Take your spears, clubs, guns, swords, stones, everything, sharpen them, hack them, those enemies, those cockroaches�" Radio Mille Collines said. Kabuga went further than mere incitement. He ensured the Interahamwe, the extremist Hutu militia that did so much of the killing, were equipped with the tools to carry out the genocide. Through one of his companies, he brought huge stocks of machetes, hoes and other farm tools - 50,000 machetes in one month - to Rwanda to be distributed to the killers.
Nobody can adequately explain what drove him to this behaviour. There was nothing to indicate his evilness in his upbringing. He was born in dire poverty, the eldest of seven children who never went to school, in a small house in the village of Nyange about an hour and a half's drive north of Kigali, the Rwandan capital.
His sister Esther Mahundaza says he showed early on an amazing aptitude for business. As a teenager he began weaving baskets, bartering them with farmers for beans, which he then sold in the market. He then bought cloth and hired sewing machines to make it into clothing.
The hard work paid off. Kabuga became very rich, despite being incapable of writing his own name. But the judicious marriage of his daughter to the son of the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana brought him into the inner circle of Rwanda's ruling clique of Hutus.
It seems that they turned him into a fanatical believer in Hutu power, and persuaded him to finance the Hutu extremists' plans for genocide, which began after Habyarimana's plane was shot down at the beginning of April 1994.
Even now, however, Mahundaza says she does not believe her brother participated in the genocide. "He was a generous man," she said. "He is not a criminal." She lives in a house that Kabuga built for her. She has not seen her brother for years. Occasionally one of Kabuga's daughters visits, but they never speak about him. "I am an old woman now and I don't expect to see my brother ever again," she said. "But I hope he lives a long life and they don't catch him."
In Kenya, the tribunal is making one more big push to get the authorities to yield Kabuga. The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Judge Hassan Jallow of Gambia, has paid a high-level visit to Nairobi and singled out Kenya as a significant offender in non-co-operation. The diplomatic corps has pressed the government to act.
It has been found that he has road transport companies carrying goods from the port of Mombasa across Kenya to Congo, Sudan and Uganda; that he owns farms, reportedly a hotel, and is suspected of being behind a supermarket chain in Malawi. He may even still have hidden business interests in Rwanda itself. We have found, too, that the municipal taxes on a four-bedroom house at the end of a neat, gated drive in Lenana Road, Nairobi, are still in his name.
But the tribunal has been unable to touch these business holdings, and it has been stymied by the need to apply through the Kenyan judicial system to have any of his accounts - those located - frozen, or businesses seized. "It is the same problem we are having with his arrest," said Sanogo. "The information would leak out and the money would disappear."
The tribunal has, however, met with some success in Europe. In the past few years it has located and frozen millions of dollars in Kabuga's bank accounts in Switzerland, Belgium and France. It was to Switzerland that Kabuga first headed after the genocide. While tens of thousands of suspected participants fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Zaire, now Congo, Kabuga and the other leaders and organisers of the slaughter left quietly by air and vanished.
According to Swiss press reports, Kabuga's entry to Switzerland was engineered by a sister married to a Rwandan secret-service man who was married to a diplomat in Berne. Using her husband's connections with a senior Swiss official in the Swiss Federal Aliens Office, she obtained Kabuga an entry visa, even though he already featured on an undesirables list.
His entry to Switzerland on July 22, 1994, went unnoticed, but his presence quickly became known and caused a scandal. However, instead of arresting him, the Swiss ordered Kabuga to leave the country. On August 18, 1994, he discreetly departed and headed for Congo, escaping the fate of two other genocide suspects whom the Swiss later arrested and tried.
Kabuga quickly set his eyes on settling in Kenya. He believed, rightly, that he could use his wealth and political connections to purchase immunity. The manner of his arrival shows his protected status. On January 25, 1997, we know he landed at Nairobi airport. He was coming from Congo on an entry permit, No 772865. A government official met him at the airport and helped him pass through immigration control. He disappeared into the fabric of Kenyan society.
At times, Kabuga has even felt secure enough to travel to Europe. One of his journeys has been traced. In 1999 he left Nairobi for Madagascar, travelling on his Kenyan diplomatic passport. Arriving in Brussels on August 12, he held a meeting at the Royal Windsor hotel with several notorious genocide suspects who had flown in especially to see him. Then he went to France and passed briefly through Britain on his way back to Kenya. He also travelled to the Far East on an arms-purchasing mission.
It is the $5m bounty on Kabuga's head that remains the best chance of catching him. Sanogo says his team has gathered information as a result of the reward and posters. "Evidently most were fake. There were people interested more in the money than in good information," he said. "But we got two good witnesses and a third who cut his links with us."
The first witness was a young Kenyan who said he had seen Kabuga get out of a limousine in Nairobi with bodyguards belonging to the Kenyan police. Checks revealed the number plate was from a car from President Moi's office. But as soon as he passed on his information he received death threats from the Kenyan police. The second witness was the murdered informant Munuhe. The tall, slim Kenyan was a jack of all trades, an opportunistic freelance journalist-cum-businessman. For reasons that are not clear, he had won the confidence of a senior civil servant, Zakayo Cheruiyot, whom the FBI identified as Kabuga's chief protector in Kenya during Moi's rule. In 2002, Cheruiyot was the internal-security permanent secretary at the Moi presidency, a position that made him one of the most powerful and feared people in the land.
Munuhe told the FBI and the UN that Cheruiyot was protecting Kabuga for money and that the presidential adviser had rented him a house in Karen, Nairobi, and asked him to shelter the Rwandan. He also revealed that Kabuga had told him he was beginning to tire at the amount of protection money he was paying the likes of Cheruiyot to stay free.
The FBI summoned a polygraph specialist from America to give the informants lie-detector tests. Afterwards the expert told Carson, the American ambassador, that there was "not a shadow of doubt" both men were telling the truth.
Carson was worried and sceptical. The US had forged good relations with Moi over the war on terror. He feared that the FBI's attempts to catch Kabuga could jeopardise them. However, faced with the evidence, he felt he had no option but to inform Moi. In any case, Moi was in the last days of his presidency.
The ambassador reported back that Moi had expressed surprise and said he would set up a commission of inquiry to get to the bottom of what was going on. This was disingenuous, for nothing in Kenya ever escaped Moi's notice.
We know Kabuga's dealings would have been no secret to the wily president for another reason. Kabuga had been a secret financier of his 1997 re-election campaign, when Moi sought and won his fifth and final term. And Kabuga's main business partner in Kenya was none other than Gideon, Moi's favourite son. The two had set up a transport company in Eldoret, in the heart of the traditional lands of Moi's tribespeople, the Kalenjin. There were other commercial enterprises linking them, too, and Kabuga had sheltered in Gideon's houses.
The inquiry commission into Kabuga's presence that Moi said he would set up was to be directed by the head of the national intelligence service, a close ally of Cheruiyot. Protesting his innocence, Cheruiyot agreed to undergo the same lie-detector test as the others had. He failed it spectacularly. "It was clear Cheruiyot knew exactly where Kabuga was, and if he wanted to, he could deliver him," said Sanogo. To increase the pressure on the Kenyan government, Pierre-Richard Prosper, the US ambassador for war crimes, accused Cheruiyot of helping Kabuga, in an exclusive interview he gave to The Sunday Times at the end of 2002, and said Kenyan government institutions were being used to protect him.
In December 2002, Moi stepped down as president. Mwai Kibaki, now 75, succeeded him. Elected on a promise of greater openness, he fired Cheruiyot and undertook to find and hand over Kabuga for trial. This emboldened Prosper to fly to Nairobi, where he said that with Kibaki's inauguration and the corrupt Moi era over, "the sources of protection are drying up for Kabuga". He predicted he would be arrested in a matter of weeks. The American, who has since left the US government, could not have been more mistaken.
Less than two weeks after Kibaki's swearing-in, the murder of Munuhe lent the lie to his words. "The point is that people are afraid. What happens is that most of the time if they have information they go to the police and tell them first," said a western diplomat. "The police tell them that if they ever come back and repeat that story, they will be killed." To this day, nobody has been arrested for Munuhe's murder.
As the clock ticks for the ICTR, Sanogo and his team are still hoping against hope for a breakthrough. And in Rwanda, a survivor of the genocide says it all: "The fact that Kabuga still has not been arrested trivialises the catastrophic effects of the genocide. He has everything. We have no one left in our families. We accuse him of forcing us to be alone, to try and get by in a world that we find empty of meaning."
12:49 PM
derek said...
Now, tell me which newspaper would carry that story in Kenya.
12:55 PM
simon gitau said...
you people are interesting. kwani, is derek not a human being to make his mind nkown. he says he support skibaki that is fine. phil is not answered with sarcastic posts when he talk about raila. maybe derek os a mt kenya mafia. let him support his man. you support ypurs if yon dont have keep queirt.he has a right. poor man. derek is alone in this raila07 blog. with the energy he uses to support kibaki, i wish kibaki knew him personaly. this man is a diferent one. evn dp officials dont that.
4:01 PM
Vikii said...
Derek did I not tell you those who shout loudest about being horseless are actually part of the backwardness that some people want in Kenya? The same "Good old" brothers have called me 'a gun for higher under the payroll of the Kenyan looters'. Any opinion divergent to their cult's beliefs is associated to "one of their own". I doubt whether you will make it bro, unless you are made of the stuff Vikii is made of. Soldier on!
9:18 PM
Anonymous said...
I would prefer to see Raila Odinga circumcised first and his filthy smelling foreskin used to make shoes for him to wear in his childish campaigns. This could assist the rogue in stopping his kavirondo herd from throwing stones and eating themselves silly in funerals. kioko. BC, canada.
9:58 PM
derek said...
Vikii and Gitura, Thanks and how painful to me and my buddy Chris that this is the LAST post I am making in this blog. I had not realised it GITURA, until last might and went to bed with a HEAVY HEART. Anyway to all, enjoy the rest of the days on this blog. Kwa hayo mengi na machache...please enjoy the read.....Anyway, I am not Kikuyu, I am Kenyan, born and raised by parents from the lake shores, and like I watched Luciano Pavarotti send off...liwe liwalo!
10:28 PM
Taabu said...
Kioko welcome back for gracing Kumekucha and being true to your crown of being the low face of this blog. Can you update your vocabulary to more than the two words of Kavirondo and kihii? Go ahead OAF.
3:45 AM
Phil said...
Granted, Kumekucha is a blog where debate is freely conducted by people with access to a computer and internet. Not just kibaki and raila supporters - as some people are purpoting here.
Unlike political and economic power in Kenya which is a monopoly of certain groups of people, Kumekucha debate goes further and allows freedom of expression by all people whenever in the world they may be. One can therefore expect to read campaign propaganda, fantasies, vulgarities, insults, etc all in the name of political analysis.
It would therefore be expecting too much if one thought everyone would agree with their sentiments whenever a comment is posted and vice versa....
4:25 AM
kenyaone said...
Jambo.
I dont know who posted the Report on Rwanda genocide but thanks. Meanwhile I appeal to those commenting on this blog, theres only one way to deal with the dilapidated mr kioko. Can we all agree to simply ignore whatever he posts and I mean exactly that. IGNORE, No answer, no COMMENTS. He is simply not worth the effort and evidently will never be. Such a person, cannot and will never add value to anything or anyone under the sun. I for one will not engage him at any level. It is simply beneath me. Additionally. Chris whatever your policy on commentators, I request this one be deleted permanently. He has obviously misunderstood the purpose of this blog. There is freedom and there is stupidity. Obviously he cant differentiate the two.
Also. Chris if your brave enough (or anyone else out there including myself, Im seriously considering) can you post a recent and dated (if possible) as well as an old picture of Kabuga. It should be as large and clear as possible. Since mainstream media have failed to tackle this issue effectively maybe we can. I will myself then proceed to attach his picture to everyone i send an e mail to. If we all did that how long would it be before someone recognises him? At least we would be trying. If anyone has his picture please forward to Chris so he can mail to me
regards all
6:09 AM
derek said...
Kenyaone, I will send three pix to Chris, in Jpeg form. derek. This story cost me a job!
10:27 AM
Taabu said...
Vikii that was a nasty and unprovoked shot at your brother. How dare you? FYI am the only self-confessed horseless person on this blog and I take your insinuation for what you intended it to serve. However, at the end of it all my responsibility to you as BB overides all and sundry emotions thereof. Since I have the luxury of chosing my friends, I will defend your right to have a go at me with percieved or real bile.
Otherwise I remain comfortable without a horse nor race. Just remember that as others differ here and shout, swear and sweat about their horses I also have the right to go without one. Come to think of it. Deriding that fact inadvertently may just succeed in erasing any trace of difference in your post, ama?. Over to you bro Vikii.
Congratulations to Kumekucha. Today, the Nation has carried that report posted by Derek last week, and more so after the Kroll Report. Kudos to all. You are simply the BEST. Congrats to you all. We need you at this time.
ReplyDeleteTaabu, thanx for that. No hard feelings. Great times ahaed and I wish to be party to it all. I have missed alot in the last tumultous week. A week that will change the face of Kenya. A week that boys were separated from men and a week that reason prevailed. A week that saw the approval of Mwai. Tuko pamoja...pole for that. I mean... are explanations not agreed on? then that be the case, Na sasa, the House of Mululu and my own alumni Mudavadi. Phil bado yuko?
ReplyDeleteForgot to add this...mchagua jembe siyo mkulima and Kibaki, being a president of sorts, has selected a party that shows his desire to lead from any front. Uhuru has just been told that he is being a tribalist for joining Kibaki. Why are all the Luo MPs who support Raila, including Thabiti thug Dalmas Otieno who left Kanu to join the Odinga Dictatorial Movement not being denigrated?
ReplyDeleteAgain, Kibaki and his governement has been accused opf not thinking of the rest of the country. This week, he is going to dole out goodies to the Luhya (sorry Westerners). Most of the projects have been ongoing, meaning that the governemnt has been flat-out in the past.
Mtu ni kura. Kibaki apewe!!!