Covering the Nairobi Law Courts and High Court for five years for Nation Newspapers was quite a challenge, initially. Thanks to my boss, Andrew Kuria, I quickly learnt the ropes and ended up enjoying the unique beat.
Some of the most memorable cases I covered were the election petition of Joseph Angatia vs Nathan Anaswa; the Jonah Anguka murder trial and the Julie Ward murder case. Some of the worst were the Mwakenya cases, where so-called dissidents were hounded, arrested, held in communicado, then sent to the courts on trumped up charges and convicted without an option of a fine or legal representation.
One of the low moments included an incident when a colleague from The East African Standard, Boniface Kaona, was ordered by Magistrate Martha Njoka (later Karua) to sit on the dusty floor as a punishment for the rest of the session for talking to an advocate while the court was in session!
On the flip side, we also had high moments like when one of the first female judges, Joyce Aluoch, summoned court reporters to her chamber and praised us for the good job we were doing.
She then concluded by telling us with a broad smile thus: “Can you please be referring to female judges like Justice Effie Owuor and I, as Lady Justice, as it is the common practice in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.”
In the election petition filed by Angatia challenging Anaswa as Malava Member of Parliament, he raised several election malpractices. The irregularities ranged from practicing witchcraft, to bribing and importation of voters to having "dead voters" who resurrected and cast their votes before returning to the underworld!
My news Editor, Job Githinji, enjoyed my daily de-briefing at lunch time by asking me in jest: "So how many dead voters do you have for us today?" And the following day’s headline would list the number of "dead voters" as the case dragged on for the entire duration of the fifth Parliament.
Travesty of justice
Angatia's lawyer was James Orengo, who doubled as the Ugenya MP. The major issue behind the scene was that though both the petitioner and the respondent were life members of the ruling party KANU, as required under the constitution in the one party rule, Angatia was considered a dissident while Anaswa was the pro-government candidate.
Angatia's alleged crime was that he was too independent-minded like his mentor Butere MP, Joseph Oyondi Shikuku, who refused to toe the line of the so-called regional spokesman, powerful Cabinet Ministers Moses Mudavadi and Burudi Nabwera. So because of that, Angatia had to be rigged out "wapende wasipende (whether the people liked it or not)!"
For four and a half years after the voters cast their votes in 1992, the petition dragged on and on to frustrate a defiant Angatia who stood his ground until the end when the magistrate ruled in his favour.
But his rival, whose seat was declared vacant, got the last laugh as the magistrate declined to order for a by election saying the time remaining was too short for the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) to conduct it before the next general elections. In the next poll, Angatia contested on an opposition ticket, won and was later appointed a Cabinet Minister.
The Animals Are Innocent
The Julie Ward case in 1989 attracted both local and international coverage and pitted her millionaire father, John Ward, against the Kanu establishment. The British hotelier had accused the government of trying to cover up the case and also for being behind his daughter's mysterious disappearance and murder at the world famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Narok County, over 200 kilometers from Nairobi, in the early 1990s.
For the love of his daughter, Mr. Ward went out of his way travelling frequently to Kenya from his base in London to oversee the private investigation by a team from New Scotland Yard as he sought justice in the Kenyan courts.
His persistence and huge resources as an hotelier helped him take the Attorney General Amos Wako to task demanding justice until two Maasai Mara Game rangers were arrested and charged with the murder.
As usual whenever the state had an interest in a case, the wheels of justice were never in a hurry. The case dragged on for over one year as local and foreign witnesses were summoned and testified. Among them was a team from New Scotland Yard who concluded that: "The animals were not responsible for her death."
That contradicted an earlier report by the Kenyan police investigators and a pathologist who pointed an accusing finger at the wild animals at Maasai Mara managed by the then Narok County Council.
On the eve of the ruling, Mr. Ward granted me an exclusive interview in his five-star hotel room at the Nairobi Safari Club, opposite the University of Nairobi. He expressed his apprehension, frustrations, fears and determination to fight to the end for justice.
And when the magistrate read his verdict acquitting the two suspects, Mr. Ward's prediction was spot on. Said Julie’s father: "I’m not surprised by this ruling; the writing was on the wall about a cover up. I’m sad that the killers of my daughter are walking free out there. I am disappointed and will consider an appeal."
And several years later Mr. Ward kept pursuing the case, but he hit a brick wall along the way. By then he had written a book picking the title from the New Scotland Yard's verdict: The Animals are Innocent.
The story behind the murder was that a son of a prominent politician at that time was involved in the abduction, murder and cover-up of one of the most covered murder cases in the country’s' history.
Absolute Power
Another "hot" case I covered in the High Court was of former Nakuru District Commissioner (DC) Jonah Anguka. In 1992, he was accused of abducting and murdering Former Foreign Affairs Minister, John Robert Ouko in January 1990: “Together with others not before the court, at his rural home in Muhoroni, Kisumu District (since renamed County).”
The case was heard by Fidahussein Abdallah with lawyer Pravin Bowry representing Anguka, while the prosecution was led by Deputy Director of Prosecution Bernard Chunga.
Three incriminating statements were read by witnesses during one of the most sensitive cases I had covered by then because the government was accused of a covering up. The former DC’s driver and bodyguard testified saying he had summoned them to his official residence at the height of the Ouko Judicial Inquiry chaired by Justice Evans Gicheru and pleaded with them saying: "Hi maneno ya Ouko inanitia wasi wasi, nisaidieni, nami piya nita wasaidia (this matter of Ouko is getting me worried; please help me and I will also help you "
Another witness, one of Anguka's nephews, said how he had telephoned him on a land line in his official residence from his office to instruct him to go into his bedroom, open the closet, retrieve a brown briefcase and take it to another relative who lived in the Nakuru police lines (staff houses) for safe-keeping.
The purpose was to ensure the police investigators would not get in the official residence, and would keep off the police lines which were in a protected area. That briefcase was the same one that the Minister had been reported to have carried in his car as he was driven from Nairobi by his driver to his rural home before his mysterious disappearance and murder.
Mysterious Ouko briefcase
One of the most shocking statements during the trail was by then Rift Valley Provincial Commission Yusuf Haji who claimed that there was a love triangle and that Ouko fathered some of Anguka's children.
When the trail resume the following morning, the DPP rose on a point of order to alert the magistrate to what he described as “misleading and malicious headline.” The East African Standard senior court reporter, Boniface Kaona, was then forced to agree that he had misquoted the PC and directed to tell his editors to run a correction in the following day’s newspaper.
Kaona had no option but to comply. Meanwhile, I sighed in relief knowing that my job, which was on the line because of the scoop, had been saved by Chunga and the magistrate.
The truth is the claims were actually made in an open court as part of the government’s desperate attempts to shift the political angle to family feud and a love triangle. I missed the story because I was 20 minutes late during the afternoon session.
But the damage had been done. That was part of the many theories the government was shoving down the public’s throat to divert attention from its being involved in the murder and subsequent cover-ups.
I later covered the Anguka case when I was transferred and promoted to be Nation Kisumu Bureau Chief. A new judge, Justice Daniel Aganyanya, had taken over the case after the death of Fidahussein. The new judge travelled to Ouko’s Koru home to visit the scene of the abduction and scene in Got Alila where the charred remains had been recovered four days later.
While waiting for the judge and court officials to arrive at the modest home, I asked Selina Were Aoko Ndalo, the house help about an Administration Policeman whom she disclosed was guarding the minister’s homestead.
Out of the blues she blurted out: "Yes we still have an armed AP guarding this home. The other day I disagreed with him and told him not to threaten me with a gun, the way those who abducted Ouko did to me"
It was at that juncture that Mrs. Christabel Ouko, his widow, who was sitting in the kitchen listening to our conversation on a bench outside, ordered Selina to stop and enter the house.
The judge later arrived and the hearing continued with Chunga leading the witnesses. A month or two later the judge ruled that Anguka was innocent and acquitted him for lack of sufficient evidence saying: “The manner the heinous act was planned and eventually executed could not have been done by an individual.”
To date no one else has been charged or convicted of the murder. In August 2017, Mrs. Ouko died in a road accident near her Koru home after making a plea to the authorities to reveal to her who was behind the heinous crime, but in vain.
In February 2020, former President Daniel Arap Moi died, a few years after he had invited Mrs. Ouko and an emissary to his Kabarak home in Nakuru County, for a secret meeting where he sought forgiveness over the murder of his friend and political confidant.
Moi‘s take on Ouko murder
According to impeccable sources, Moi had sent an emissary to Mrs. Ouko to plead with her to visit him "as the ghost of Ouko is giving me sleepless nights." When Mrs. Ouko obliged and travelled to Moi’s rural Kabarak home in Nakuru County, with an aide, she told him all she wanted from him was to be told “who killed my husband.”
Moi is said to have vehemently denied any involvement, but pointed an accusing finger at one of his confidante and power ministers, who has since died.
Village justice
Fast forward to September, 2021. A recent walk along the dusty streets of Ahero Town in Kisumu County made me come face to face with a victim of instant justice.
But unlike the usual suspects, petty thief, this time around it was of a boda-boda (motorbike) taxi operator who had rammed into a student cyclist damaging the front wheel.
A huge crowd gathered at the scene at dusk and threatened to lynch the boda operator unless he took liability and paid the student enough money to repair his bike and seek medical attention. An attempt by the apiko-man; as they are called locally, to pass the buck and blame the traumatized student fell on deaf years.
The irate members of the public and other boda-boda operators and jua kali artisans ganged up and ensured that the cornered suspect admitted liability, apologised and produced Shs1, 000 in cash for the repair of the schoolboys' bicycle on the spot.
It reminded me of a popular hit song by an American musical group Temptation in the 1970s that talked about: “There ain't no justice”.
There ain't no justice
That instant justice was a far cry to what I witnessed as a court reporter in Nairobi's Law Courts and High Court in the 1980s and 1990s at the height of the Mwakenya cases involving so-called dissidents who were mostly university students, lecturers, politicians and anti-Moi activists.
The whole charade was like something from a Naija and/or a Hollywood movie. The police would arrest the suspects, hold them incommunicado for several days, and torture them until they agreed to plead guilty when they were presented in an open court for a stage-managed trial.
The overzealous Deputy Director of Prosecution, Bernard Chunga, worked in cahoots with the police to ensure all Mwakenya suspects pleaded guilty and ensured the magistrate gave them an instant sentence with no option of bail or a fine.
For some strange reasons, the suspects were always brought to court under very tight security between 3pm and 5pm when most courts were not in session, magistrates were in their chambers and advocates were away in their offices around the Central Business District.
One of my colleagues who covered most of the Mwakenya cases was Senior Court Reporter, Andrew Kuria, who was even threatened severally for "adding salt to the stories by giving graphic details of the time, environment in court and lack of any lawyers to represent the suspects."
Once in a while, I would also cover some of those "hot and sensitive’’ cases. In one case, a suspect was brought to the magistrate’s court at 4.30pm to be charged with sedition for allegedly being a member of an unlawful organisation, being in possession of a seditious publication and supporting anti-government elements.
When he was asked to plead, the suspect denied the charge to the shock of the DPP and the magistrate who were waiting to go through the motion. In addition to denying the offence, the suspect had a lawyer hired hurriedly by his relatives to defend him, something that was unheard of those days under Moi and Kanu dictatorship.
An attempt by Chunga to intimidate the suspect to change his plea fell on deaf ears as the tough lawyer stood his ground saying his client denied all the charges. During the standoff, the embarrassed magistrate adjourned the hearing to the following day and ordered the suspect to be taken back to the police cells till the following day, and ignored his pleas to be remanded at Nairobi Remand Home, and accused the Special Branch officers of having tortured him.
I wrote the news story which was published in the following day’s Nation. When the case came up the following day, everything had changed. The suspect changed his plea to guilty and disowned his lawyer. The magistrate then sentenced him to five years without an option of a fine.
In another Mwakenya case, Magistrate Mary An’gawa, also sentenced an accused to serve a jail term with no option of a bond and was shocked to hear him tell her off in her native Dholuo language: “Ok unu nyal (you will never succeed!” as he was sent to the gallows.
Even journalists were not spared, a leading Sunday Nation columnist, Wahome Mutahi, alias Whispers, was a victim of the stage-managed Mwakenya case making us members of the Fourth Estate, nickname the courts as "Corridors of injustice."
Looking back decades later, so much has changed in the Judiciary aka Corridors of Justice, for the better going by the appointment of a former dissident and Mwakenya victim, Dr. Willy Mutunga, as the Chief Justice, from 2011 to 2016, and later David Maranga and Martha Koome, respectively, who have reformed the judiciary to what it is today.
Comments