Cracking the Ouko Murder Mystery
By Okoth Osewe
The
Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the 1990 murder of Dr. Robert
Ouko, former
The cumulative evidence that has so far been adduced at the Inquiry has strengthened established theories about Dr. Ouko’s brutal abduction from his Koru home before he was murdered by the former Moi regime. Most importantly, the three witnesses tended to confirm previous facts established by investigators and independent researchers alike that the former Foreign Affairs Minister was picked from his Koru home on the night of February 12th by Mr. Hezekiah Oyugi (former Internal Security chief)), Mr. Johna Anguka (former Nakuru DC) Mr. George Oraro (Dr. Ouko’s former Lawyer), Mr. Joseph K’Oyoo (former campaigner of Dr. Ouko), Mr. Paul Gondi, a Banker and Mr. Erick Onyango, a businessman.
A new name that was added to the list by Mr. Mukhunwa (who also confirmed the above personalities as having been involved in the kidnap of Dr. Ouko) was that of Mr. Omwenga, a senior Special Branch official who was based in Kisumu and whom, Mukhunwa said, was in a white Land rover that ferried Dr. Ouko away after he was handed over to a team that was backed by uniformed GSU personnel who were used to execute the kidnap operation.
Unanswered questions
At the Inquiry, a major source of interest was the note that contained the names of Dr. Ouko’s kidnappers and which the Minister is said to have left behind to be passed over to Mr. Mbaja by Selina Were. Both Selina and Dr. Ouko’s widow, Christabel, have denied the existence of the note. This position contradicted evidence of police officer Mukhunwa who confirmed that the note existed. Mukhunwa said that according to information he obtained from a file that contained statements by witnesses Detective Troon was interviewing, names in the Ouko note corresponded with names in the first statement by Ouko’s guard Mr. Agallo Obonyo which was recorded with police after Dr. Ouko’s murder. Mukhunwa also said that the existence of the note was confirmed by close police contacts who handled evidence during cover up immediately after Dr. Ouko’s murder. The question is: In denying the existence of the note, will Christabel dismiss Mukhunwa’s evidence about the note when she appears before the inquiry?
At the Ouko Commission of inquiry that was disbanded by Moi, Agallo was convicted of perjury and jailed for six months but he never served the jail term. This was after it was established that Agallo recorded a new statement with police where he deleted the names of those he identified in his first police statement as those who kidnapped Dr. Ouko. These were the same people Ouko allegedly identified in the note Mbaja said he received from Selina. When Agallo changed his statement, Mukhunwa said that it was two months after Dr. Ouko’s murder, the guard had been bribed with Ksh 4 million to keep silent while he had also retired, having been paid his pension by the government. In denying the existence of the note, could Christabel have been compromised like her husband’s guard to hide the truth about Dr. Ouko’s real kidnappers or is the human testimony and paper trail linked to the note a classic combination of fact and fiction?
Mr. George Oraro, Mr. Joseph K’Oyoo, Mr. Paul Gondi and Mr. Erick Onyango were close family friends of the Oukos and denials by Christabel and Selina about the existence of the note that contained the above names raises more questions. The denials were made through the press and before the Inquiry began questioning witnesses. In distancing herself from the note, was Christabel and Selina trying to protect the image of three close family friends in the hope that there would be no credible witness to back up Mbaja’s claim that the note was extracted from his office by police? Is it possible that Christabel could protect people who played a big role in luring her husband to his killers or is it Mbaja and Mukhunwa who are telling lies at the Inquiry? Will the Sungu committee rule that the note existed in the face of conflicting evidence?
Previous theories
confirmed by witnesses
So far, the three witnesses who have appeared at the Inquiry
have confirmed a series of events that have, in the past, been made public
about the disappearance and subsequent murder of Dr. Ouko but which could not
be raised openly by witnesses in
Another confirmation that emerged at the Inquiry is the fact that during Dr. Ouko’s kidnap, there was so much commotion that some of the Minister’s workers were awakened. Selina Were, Dr. Ouko’s house help, has since confirmed that she heard a gun shot the night the Minister was kidnapped while it is now public that window glasses were broken and extra force used during the kidnap operation. Other leads that have been confirmed at the Inquiry include a disagreement that occurred between Dr. Ouko and President Moi in the United States during the Congressional Prayer Breakfast, the holding of a Press conference in Washington where Dr. Ouko outshined former President Moi together with information that Dr. Ouko was preparing a report about corruption in the government when he was killed.
In traditional capitalist societies, Commissions of Inquiries, Task forces and Probe committees have been used by corrupt or murderous ruling classes to sooth public anger, buy time during times of crisis or to divert public attention from more critical issues even when it is clear from the beginning that such bodies may not end in prosecutions because of dodgy evidence.
For the Narc government, the Ouko Parliamentary Select committee will serve to hook public attention on the Ouko murder mystery and raise new hopes among Kenyans that the killers of the former Minister are in the process of being apprehended as per election promises. Such diversionary hopes are needed by the government at a time when workers are being retrenched and as splits within the ruling Coalition also deepens. Half a million jobs Narc promised Kenyans per year have not been created while the promise of a new Constitution within 100 days in power is effectively dead. For a public whose impatience about the government’s inability to deliver on major election promises is increasing by the hour, sensation from the Inquiry beamed in the media is a welcome relief which, nevertheless, will diminish when the Inquiry reaches the critical stage where Dr. Ouko’s killers need to be apprehended to face justice.
The covert cover up operations that are already come to surface, new information about Dr. Ouko’s workers being bribed with as much as Ksh 4 million by former Moi’s regime in exchange for silence, secret meetings by Dr. Ouko’s workers organized by Special Branch officers before the minister’s kidnap, open destruction of crucial evidence by Dr. Ouko’s killers after the discovery of the body and systematic murder of potential witnesses by the former regime are enough reasons for those whose names are known to have been connected to the Ouko murder to be taken into custody for further investigation. These personalities include former President Daniel arap Moi, former Energy Minister Nicholas Biwott, former CID boss Noah arap Too and a squad of Special Branch officers who are believed to have been part of the murder team and subsequent cover up operation.
Key suspects may flee
into exile
Our perspective is that in case the impossible happens and
the Inquiry begins to move in the direction of possible prosecutions, people
who were involved in the murder and who have not been rounded up will escape
the country including key government officials who were involved in the
conspiracy. Top suspects in the Ouko murder have millions of stolen money kept
in foreign bank accounts while they also have possibilities of leaving
A worrying trend as the Inquiry began its difficult trek to
the truth on the Ouko murder is that suspected conspirators like former
President Moi have been left to rebut evidence
implicating them in the Ouko murder through the media and from safe retirement
where he is surrounded with body guards instead of being summoned to appear
before the Inquiry to say why his government eliminated a Minister who was
trying to address the issue of corruption in Kenya. Biwott,
the only surviving chief suspect, has been left with the luxury of hiring “Risk
advisory groups” from
Barack Mbaja, Dr. Ouko’s brother, said that Moi met him at State house to try and buy his silence after his brother’s murder. What has already happened is that Moi has been allowed to get away from this serious allegation through a casual denial in the media that he never met Mbaja. Other witnesses who have been named in the case and who should have been taken into custody to help with investigation have been left to call sporadic Press conferences to state that although their names have been mentioned at the Inquiry, they were never involved in the Ouko murder. This is the case when it comes to the likes of Mr. George Oraro, former lawyer of Dr. Ouko who was named as one of the people who was present when Dr. Ouko was kidnapped and who has called Press conferences accompanied by a loyal retinue of sycophants programmed to back up his alibi. Will the Ouko Inquiry lead to prosecutions or will the public be satisfied with “the truth” even if Dr. Ouko’s killers remain free?
Cracking the Ouko murder mystery
To get to the bottom of the Ouko case, the government has an
uphill task. This is because the Ouko Inqury will have to get its hands on a tape cassette that
was recorded by Mr. Oyugi before he died and that is
currently in the custody of Mr. Edward O’Neill, a British journalist who
obtained it through a Nurse in
We have to point out that it could not be verified whether the voice on the tape is that of Mr. Oyugi because we are not familiar with Oyugi’s voice. But the information is so precise that it leaves any lay listener with a strong feeling that it is Oyugi on the line. He sounds like a man in pain, sometimes speaking with a lot of effort. For the Kenyan government with all resources at its disposal, identification of the voice in this tape should be easy through scrutiny by sound experts, family members and other contacts who were familiar with Mr. Oyugi. In the tape (which no doubt was recorded after the release of Oyugi from custody and after the dissolution of Ouko Commission of Inquiry), Oyugi mentions that the road accident Ouko had at Awasi was no accident while he also says that there were several meetings in Nairobi and Kisumu (including one at Nyayo house and one at Harambee house) to plan the Ouko operation before the former Minister was kidnapped. He gives a chilling sequence of events and names prominent personalities who attended the meetings and those who were in charge of different operations before and after Dr. Ouko’s murder. For example, the Kisumu meeting was attended by a former Nyanza PC while the Harambee house meeting was attended by a former VP.
In the tape it is clear that Oyugi
intended to use it as a last minute testimony after all avenues were closed and
at a time when it appeared as though the former Security chief understood too
well that he wouldn’t live for long. He mentions that he left information in
the tape with an unidentified lawyer in
We cannot go into detail here because of warnings by lawyers. But in the tape, Oyugi names where Dr. Ouko was killed, how he was killed, who pulled the trigger and how the former Minister’s body was dumped at the foot of Got Alila. He says that the cover up operation based on a suicide theory began to break down when Mr. Barack Mbaja refused to cooperate with the government “as had been expected” even after a face to face meeting with President Moi. Mr. Oyugi says that the suicide theory was hatched only after Dr. Ouko’s body had been dumped at Got Alila by Special Branch officers. He mentions that Dr. Ouko’s widow cooperated with the government after intimidation that the government would abandon her together with her children if she failed to help.
As riots increased in
Another source of information that may crack the Ouko murder
mystery is Mr. Dennis Chege, a former Special Branch
officer currently exiled in
The brutality in the former Minister’s torture advanced to a new stage such that by the time he was brought in for another round of interrogation, he was “more bloody” and the prospect of him being killed to cover up what had happened to him began to take shape in the minds of the conspirators. Mr. Chege said that Dr. Ouko was all the time in extreme pain during interrogation following injuries he had suffered during kidnap including a broken ankle. “He pleaded constantly for his life to be spared but this did not work out because there could have been no explanation for his injuries”, Chege said during an interview in Holland (notes on file) in October 1996 for a book project after his credentials were verified by the government of Holland which eventually allowed him to stay.
To solidify his case and to strengthen his credibility as a person who was in the “thick of things” when Dr. Ouko was murdered, Chege managed to escape with a few copies of documents from the “Ouko files” as the files were on their way to State House hours after they were stolen from Dr. Ouko’s house by members of the Special Branch. He admits that he did not photo copy the documents by himself but adds that “insider information” about the Ouko murder was circulating freely within the intelligence community and that any officer who was interested could get the information. The former SB officer said that copies he obtained from the Ouko files were handed over to the Dutch Immigration department as part of evidence of his asylum application. Despite his pain, Chege said that Dr. Ouko was defiant to the end that the question of corruption in the government and human rights violations had to be addressed by Moi, not just to prevent the government from collapse but also in the interest of the Kenyan people. For the Sungu committee, Mr. Chege could provide good leads in cracking the Ouko case.
Another interesting witness whose explosive evidence at the Sungu committee could subject both Moi
and Biwott to extreme indigestion and advance the
search for Dr. Ouko’s killers to new and sensational
levels is Mr.George Wajackoya, a former
Special Branch officer currently holed up in
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Published by Kenya
Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com