Robert Ouko murder: Fear still stalks Koru, 29 years later

[Mzalendo_Mkweli]

Almost three decades have passed, reports published and forgotten. but villagers in Koru are still shaken.
Their fear is written on their faces 29 years later.

FEBRUARY 13
The murder of Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko on February 13, 1990 is still fresh in many people’s minds.
And the subsequent events following the killing that have seen key witnesses die mysteriously, adding to the villagers’ fears.

Few are willing to discuss the topic freely.

As we drive into the village in Muhoroni, Kisumu County, children who were not born when the minister was killed give the car a chase.

We approach Got Alila where Dr Ouko’s charred remains were found.
Unlike the children, adults shy away, some vanish into the bushes or their houses while others only watch from a distance.

Our presence is obviously a cause of concern around the homesteads at the foot of Got Alila, just three kilometres from the Ouko home.

The road in the hilly area is dusty and the vegetation dry. River Nyando provides the much needed water for locals.

We bump into two villagers — Esau Omollo and Joe Were.

After a brief talk, an uneasy Omollo agrees to take us to the spot Dr Ouko’s body was found by Paul Shikuku, a herdsboy.

CHURCH SERVICE
We walk through overgrown shrubs to the rocky point.
A metal rod stands at the exact spot the charred remains were found.
Mr Omollo says he was barely 10 years old when Dr Ouko was murdered.
We attempt to persuade him to take us to Shikuku’s home for an interview but our efforts are in vain.

The topic seems to unnerve all.

The Shikuku family home is across the river in Ainamoi, Kericho County.
Mr Omollo says Dr Ouko might have known he was going to die.
“On Sunday February 11, 1990, the minister attended a church service at AIC Koru and he asked to address the congregation,” Mr Omollo said.

“He opened the Bible and read Job 7:1-14. There was silence in the church. The minister occasionally stopped reading and wiped tears from his eyes.”

​

Job 7 reads: “Human life is like forced army service, like a life of hard manual labour, like a slave longing for cool shade; like a worker waiting to be paid...When I lie down to sleep, the hours drag. I toss all night and long for dawn...My body is full of worms. It is covered with scabs. Pus runs out of my sores...Remember, O God, my life is only a breath; my happiness has already ended.”

Mr Were says villagers have not forgotten the death.

“A lot of water has passed under the bridge but we leave it all to God,” he says.

Three days after the church service, Shikuku found the minister’s body.

“There was a can, a pen, spectacles, a walking stick, a torch and a pistol next to the body. The can, we later heard, contained acid. The face was almost unidentifiable,” Mr Were said.
Mr Omollo says security teams would visit Koru day and night sending many in panic.

'KILLERS KNOWN'
Former Kisumu Town East MP Gor Sungu, who in 2013 chaired a parliamentary team that investigated the death, told the Nation on Monday that Dr Ouko’s killers are known.

He was, however, guarded with information.

“Some killers have died. This information is in the Hansard. We tabled the report but was never discussed in Parliament,” Mr Sungu said.

“One of the achievements of the committee is that the evidence it presented is preserved. All the files are kept in Parliament.”

He recalled how members of the committee flew to London, the UK and interviewed Scotland Yard detective John Troon, who was called in by President Daniel arap Moi in the 1990s to lead investigations into the killing of the Foreign Affairs minister.

“We took the details and the records are available. We even got the work tickets of the vehicles used and have the names of the individuals in those records,” Mr Sungu added.

He blames past regimes for “frustrating our efforts”.

He said his committee did everything possible to unravel the mystery surrounding Dr Ouko’s death.
Mr Sungu said the matter could still be pursued and the killers brought to book.

'PEDDLING RUMOURS'
The country witnessed riots following the death of Foreign Affairs minister Robert Ouko.

Months later, President Daniel arap Moi formed a commission of inquiry to look into the murder. It was led by Justice Evans Gicheru. The commission, which sat for 13 months, took statements from 176 witnesses and had almost 250 sessions.

Among the people mentioned as suspects were Industry Minister Nicholas Biwott, PS in the Office of the President Hezekiah Oyuki and Mr Jonah Anguka, the Nakuru District Commissioner.

President Moi would later disband the commission, accusing the witnesses of peddling rumours.

“There is no statute of limitations when it comes to murder. The cases can be pursued even when perpetrators die. Elderly people have been prosecuted for crimes they committed in the past. An example is Chilean former president Augusto Pinochet,” said Mr Sungu, adding that had Dr Ouko gone public with threats on his life, the killers would probably have spared him.

Source: Daily Nation

 

[Imeloa]

He suspected he might be killed but he chose not to make it public, that was the gravest blunder he committed that cost his life.

It is believed that even the late opposition politician the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Raila's father alerted Dr. Ouko on the alleged assassination plot but the latter made no reaction.

 

[Boniphace Kichonge]

February 21, 2020
• No one on the Washington trip questioned by Troon or the Kenyan police said they knew of a row.

• Truth and little things like facts have rarely been allowed to get in the way of telling the story of Ouko’s murder.

by Martin Minns News


- The late President Moi and Robert Ouko in Washington in 1990
Of all the many stories told about the life of President Daniel arap Moi, none is more egregious than that which alleged he was implicated in the murder of Dr Robert Ouko.

Of this I am quite certain: it wasn’t Moi.


The story grew up that Ouko was seen as a threat to his president, or that he was about to reveal high-level corruption in Moi’s administration, or again that there had been ‘some sort of row’ between the president and his minister during a trip to Washington DC and that one or more of these theories may have been a motive for Moi to have Ouko assassinated.

It’s provably utter rubbish- there’s hardly a grain of truth in any of it but then the truth and little things like facts have rarely been allowed to get in the way of telling the story of Ouko’s murder.

Ouko was no threat to Moi. He was a Kanu man and he was Moi’s man, serving as Foreign Affairs minister from 1979 to 1983, brought back into front line politics by Moi as Industry minister in 1987 and once again promoted by Moi to Foreign Affairs minister after the 1988 election.

Moi knew he could rely on the articulate and loyal Ouko to defend him and his government.

MOI CALLS IN SCOTLAND YARD

There’s also the slight matter that President Moi called in New Scotland Yard to investigate Ouko’s murder, a surely illogical and reckless act of folly if he himself was involved in the murder.


Moi’s calling in New Scotland Yard is often explained away that he did so after coming under increasing pressure over several days, if not weeks: not so.


Moi requested help from the British police almost immediately Ouko’s body was found on Friday, February 16, 1990. Diplomatic telexes show that an ‘urgent request’ to the British authorities for assistance was made ‘over the weekend’ of the 17th and 18th.


On February 21, five days after Ouko’s body had been found, a team of New Scotland Yard detectives led by Superintendent John Troon, accompanied by Dr Iain West, a forensic pathologist, arrived in Nairobi.

On August 28, Troon completed his ‘Final Report’ into the murder of Ouko. Although it did not ‘in any way’ implicate Moi, Troon’s theories did form the basis for later allegations against him.


KISUMU CORRUPTION AND THE WASHINGTON TRIP

Troon came up with two theories as to a possible motive for Ouko’s murder.One was an allegation of corruption over the rehabilitation of a molasses plant in Kisumu, the other that there had been ‘a row of some sort’ during a presidential trip to Washington DC following a supposed private meeting between Ouko and President George H.W. Bush after Moi had been snubbed by the US leader.
The Kisumu molasses corruption theory arose principally from the testimony of a Swiss-German woman, one Marianne Briner-Mattern, and to a lesser extent her Italian ‘partner’ Domenico Airaghi, ostensibly directors of BAK International, a company brought in by Ouko to raise funds in Italy to rehabilitate a molasses plant in Ouko’s constituency.

Briner-Mattern testified that ‘kickbacks’ were demanded for senior Kenyan politicians to allow the project to go forward, with a percentage to be passed on to Moi, and that Ouko was writing a report into the Kisumu molasses plant corruption which he planned to hand to the President.

Troon accepted Briner-Mattern and Airaghi’s story because he said in his ‘assessment,’ they were ‘truthful and honest witnesses’ under a ‘reputable company’, although he acknowledged that their testimony was ‘tenuous’ and ‘circumstantial’.

It transpired that Airaghi was a convicted criminal found guilty by an Italian court (Milan, March 14, 1987) on charges of attempted extortion. The principal witness in his defence was none other than Marianne Briner-Marten.


Nor was their company BAK ‘reputable’. It never traded, nor did it legally exist until it was registered as ‘BAK Group Marianne-Briner and Partner’ on February 13, 1990 – the day that Ouko was murdered, whereupon Briner-Mattern’s claim for $150,000 from the Kenyan government for alleged losses incurred over the molasses project increased to just under $6 million.

No ‘corruption report’ was ever found none other than Briner-Mattern ever said that there was one.

T
admitted that the Washington trip theory was based on the hearsay testimony of Ouko’s brother Barrack Mbajah and their sister Dorothy Randiak who claimed they had heard of a row. Neither was on the trip and their testimony could not be corroborated.

By the time of a Parliamentary Select Committee’s ‘investigation’ 15 years later, the story had been greatly embellished.

Now it ran that a furious Moi made Ouko return from Washington on a different flight to the rest of the Kenyan delegation, that his passport was then confiscated, he was sacked, his security removed, his driver dismissed, Ouko himself banished to his farmhouse at Koru and later taken to State House in Nakuru, beaten, shot in front of Moi and his body dumped back at the foot of Got Alila, just over 2km from his Koru home.

Great story but again provably untrue.

No one on the Washington trip questioned by Troon or the Kenyan police said they knew of a row. US diplomatic telexes and eye witness accounts attest that the Washington trip went well.

President Bush’s official diary, official archives and reliable testimony prove that there was no meeting between Bush and Ouko. Indeed, at the time Mbajah claimed the meeting took place Bush wasn’t even in Washington D.C.

Ouko then returned to Nairobi with the Kenyan delegation as multiple eye witness testimonies, photographs and news media film footage prove beyond any doubt.

Ouko’s passport was not confiscated. His office staff said they had it in preparation for his next trip to The Gambia. Mrs Ouko later handed it to the British police.

Ouko was not ‘sacked’ or ‘banished’. He continued to give instructions to his office staff and making a speech in Kisumu. Nor were his driver and bodyguard removed - they travelled with the minister to Koru.

As for the ‘shot in State House’ theory, Dr West’s forensic evidence together with the finding of a bullet mark at the scene proved that Ouko had been shot where his body was found and eye witness testimony proved that had to have been on the morning of February 13.

Ouko could not have been ‘shot at State House’.

President Moi may not have been an innocent man but he was entirely innocent of murdering Ouko.

Martin Minns produced the documentary Murder at Got Alila: Who killed Dr Robert Ouko and why?

 

[mrangi]

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