Once notorious, powerful brothers who can no longer buy their freedom

Lawyer Cliff Ombeta (second left) with some of the Akasha familly members at the Mombasa Law Courts, January 30, 2017. [PHOTO:GIDEON MAUNDU/STANDARD].

As Ibrahim Abdalla Akasha choked on his own blood, bleeding out on a wet, cold and lonely stretch of a road in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, his last thoughts probably wandered past the image of his wailing wife, face sputtered with blood, to perhaps that the empire he had built would outlast rivals and outrun every law enforcement agency.

When he breathed his last in that European city, his eldest son Kamaldin, brought up in the murky ways of the world of crime, stepped into his bloody shoes. His second name was enough to make him the head of one of Africa’s most feared crime families.

But Kamaldin had ambition. He saw what his father had achieved, and he wanted more. Money, fame, power and notoriety. He wanted a movie star’s life. And most importantly for him, his younger brothers, heirs in waiting to the Akasha family throne, wanted this life too, and together they set off on a journey of ruthlessly expanding their drug operation into waters that their father had approached with care.

“The Akashas were responsible for production and distribution of ton quantities of narcotics within Kenya and throughout Africa. Moreover, the Akasha Organisation’s distribution network extends beyond the African continent to include the distribution of narcotics for importation into the United States,” a report by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) says of the family. However, as they found success in their trade, tragedy never seemed to be far away. In 2002, Kamaldin too fell to an assassin’s bullet at a petrol station in Makupa.

Thirst for more

Enter then 25-year-old Baktash, fuelled by the rage of losing an elder brother and thirst for greater, grandeur things in half the time his father took to rise to the top, took over the family business with a point to prove.

His strategy was simple. Move as much product as possible. The years after his father’s death were not the best. Ibrahim’s fall meant it was open season in the drug and crime world and the hunters came out in droves to try and knock the Akasha siblings off the throne.

Baktash somehow managed to hang on. Buying off rivals with the huge cash reserves inherited from the dealings of the two slain Akashsas, he bought influence both within his circles and within the police and judicial system. Rivals were put away yet he thrived and for a brief period in history it looked as if the family was in ascendancy.

Those who interacted with him say Baktash suffered a terrible, almost incurable case of tunnel vision. He couldn’t see that as he grew and spread his tentacles, others were catching up to him. Most notably the DEA watched his every move, listened to his every conversation and knew what he had for breakfast and what he planned to have for dinner. And most importantly, the heights to which he wanted his drug business to soar.

So when the DEA felt they had a big enough fly, they hooked it, and Baktash, his younger brother Ibrahim, and business partners eagerly sunk their teeth into the bait. Three years later, they donned the orange of a New York correctional facility, the sunny streets of Mombasa and the sandy beaches of Nyali a near, yet distant memory for the bosses they had grown to become. On November 9, 2014 Baktash Akasha, Ibrahim Akasha, Gulam Hussein and Vijaygiri Goswami were arrested in Mombasa, pursuant to a United States request, based on charges filed in the Southern District of New York arising out of their participation in a conspiracy to import kilogram quantities of heroin and methamphetamine into the United States.

“Over the course of several months, during telephone calls and meetings in Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya, the defendants agreed to supply, and in fact did supply, multi-kilogram quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to individuals they believed to be representatives of a South American drug-trafficking organization, but who were in fact confidential sources working at the direction and under the supervision of the DEA,” a statement from the US Department of Justice said following the arrest of the four. Back home, their lawyer was throwing a frantic fit trying to locate the clients who many thought would still be within the Kenyan justice system where they could easily buy out their way back to freedom.

Prison cell

Through a series of rouses and traps, the Akashas and their cohorts had unknowingly dug themselves into a hole whose bottom would be the hard concrete floor of a prison cell. In a few years, their layered operation was unravelled.

For instance, in a meeting in Mombasa in April 2014, Baktash introduced a DEA source via Skype to one of his heroin suppliers in Pakistan, who said he could provide 420 kilogrammes of 100 per cent pure heroin – which he called “diamond” quality – for distribution in the United States.

And now, 17 years after the death of Ibrahim, the family patriarch and one time boss of all bosses, the heirs to his throne now sit in a cold American cell. Homesick. Missing the days they would walk into discotheques in Mombasa and pistol whip revellers just for the sake of it and wondering why they couldn’t smell the rouse by the DEA from a mile away. After all, they had been taught how to spot a policeman and head the other way.