Ugly wait for justice as kin from both sides point fingers

By PATRICK KIBET

For those awaiting justice for atrocities committed after the 2007 elections, the crimes that destroyed their lives linger fresh in the minds.

Veronica Wanja can vividly recall the gang of marauding youth who attacked their home in Solai area in mid-January, 2008. It hurts to remember how they murdered her mother Kezeih Wangui.

Wanja lives at Kamukunji, a lowly town situated in Solai, Nakuru County. The mother of one says there was fear in the air long before the attack.

“It was a Friday night,” she remembers. “There was overwhelming tension in the area. On this day my mother insisted we eat supper and retire to bed early.”

Her mother had been informed that Banita area, which neighbours Solai, had been attacked. Unable to leave, they could only hope for the best. According to Wanja, a gang of more than 50 youths, armed with crude weapons, attacked their homestead. As they set about burning what they could, she and her other relatives fled for dear life, scattering in different directions.

“I pleaded with my mum to leave with us but she was reluctant,” she says. Also left behind in the commotion was her five-year-old brother.

Many of those fleeing headed for the nearby Solai police station. It was there that Wanja was later reunited with her brother. Her mother had been killed and their house burnt down.

Inadequate evidence

Wanja says the police made no effort to chase away the youth, despite some of the homes under attack being just a few kilometres from the police station. “The officers were only shooting in the air,” she says.

Five years after the incident, Kamukunji town is trying to move on. Wanja says they know some of the perpetrators who killed her mother.

A post-mortem by Titus Ngulundu, a pathologist at the Nakuru Provincial General Hospital, showed Wangui bled to death from deep cuts on her head. One person was arrested and charged. He was however released last month. The judge who heard the case found the witnesses who testified in court did not properly identify the accused. Despite this, Wanja says: “We have not been informed why the court released the accused. Justice has not been delivered.”

The court noted that the evidence presented in court was not enough to convict the accused of the murder charges before court. For Wanja and her family, justice has not only eluded them for five years, but also diminished the hope they had entrusted in the courts.

“You cannot compensate for the loss of my mother but is there any justice for us if perpetrators have been released by courts?” she poses.

Relatives of Kimani Thiong’o, 66, who was murdered in Kangema village, Timboroa, during the post-election period, had a different experience. They got to see 24-year-old Peter Kipkemboi Ruto jailed for life after being found guilty by a court. The killer was a long-time neighbour.

But the two families see the court sentence with different lenses. Kipkemboi’s family thinks the sentence was too harsh while Kimani’s believes they got justice.

The former family disputes prosecution assertions that their son, then only 19, and two other relatives — Daniel Kibor and Ng’etich Koros — killed the old man.

At their home in Kamura area, Kipkemboi’s parents maintain their son’s innocence, despite evidence shown in a trial that ran for four years. They say that they, too, were victims of post-election violence. Emily Kipleitich, Kipkemboi’s mother, points to her house, which was burnt down during the skirmishes.

“My son was sentenced for crimes he did not commit,” Kipleitich maintained. “Our house was burnt down on December 31, 2007, before the neighbours’ home was razed down on January 1, 2008. Where were the witnesses when the skirmishes happened because we were all affected?” she asks.

Reconciliation

Both families agree that no effort has been made to reconcile them.

“We haven’t sat with the other communities living here for any reconciliation,” says Susan Wanjiru Thiongo, daughter to the deceased. “Kipkemboi’s family have not asked for any forgiveness. We were even threatened during the hearing of the case. But finally justice has been done.”

According to the evidence by 11 prosecution witnesses, Thiongo was killed in cold blood in broad daylight at his Kagema farm. While sentencing Kipkemboi to the gallows, Justice Roselyn Wendoh dismissed the accused defence and ruled that he was part of the group that attacked the home of Thiongo.

The court noted the attack happened during the day and witnesses had no difficulty identifying the killers. The police did not escape criticism though as two suspects, Kibor and Ngetich, who were identified as accomplices by witnesses have not been arrested to date.

Justice Wendoh found the attack was premeditated, planned and executed by the raiders after the disputed elections in 2007.

“I find the accused was an accomplice and the evidence has proved beyond reasonable doubt. I find the accused guilty of the offence,” Wendoh concluded.