MP quizzed over death of varsity student

Police review CCTV in student's death probe

Updated 50 min(s) ago
By Cyrus Ombati

Police are reviewing CCTV cameras mounted at the apartment where university student Mercy Chepkosgei Keino had been before her death.

Those who have seen the footage say Ms Keino was captured leaving the gates alone while headed for Waiyaki Way where her body was found.

Images of a woman and man moving to the gate and back minutes after Ms Keino had left are also in the tape.

Director of CID Ndegwa Muhoro said the tape will help them retrace her last moments. "For now, those who have viewed the tapes say she was captured leaving alone. Other experts are reviewing the footage to help us in the investigations," said Muhoro.

The apartment is mounted with cameras, which are said to be on around the clock. Some of the witnesses will be questioned afresh in the ongoing investigations.

Insiders say two senior prosecuting counsels from the Directorate of Public have been guiding the investigations and asked to visit the apartment where Keino was before her death. They have also asked that some of those who have been questioned and recorded statements do it again for clarifications.

"Even though preliminary findings point at a case of hit and run, the officers want some loopholes sealed by questioning again the witnesses who, for now, are suspects," said an officer familiar with probe.

The team is said to have visited the Wasini Luxury Homes on Wednesday.

On Friday they were scheduled to summon some of those who were present at the party at the apartment.

They have until Tuesday to submit their report to the DPP’s office, which will decide who is liable for the death.

DPP Keriako Tobiko had on Tuesday asked the findings of the investigations and accompanying investigation file be submitted to him within seven days after Mercy’s family insisted she may have been killed.

www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000038236&cid=4&ttl=Police review CCTV in student's death probe

Get Off Your Fat Asses, I Say To The Kenya Police
SATURDAY, 02 JULY 2011 00:01 BY MIGUNA MIGUNA

I have a confession to make. When I read about the grisly murder of the University of Nairobi student Merci Keino, I cringed and cried so loud those near me might have thought I had gone crazy. I was. I am a proud father of four lovely young girls aged between fifteen and seven. I could only think of my girls when the news about Mercy’s death broke. So, readers should forgive me if I take her death personally. I do.
And for that reason, I am extremely upset with the ever fumbling and incompetent Kenya Police. I have read with more anger Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere’s plea that ‘Mwau aides should be charged.’ Gracious Lord; that’s the institution Kenyans expect to conduct investigations and apprehend Mercy’s killers?

By law, only the police have the mandate to conduct criminal investigations and apprehend criminals. But on that newspaper report Iteere is pleading with God-knows-who to arrest people that had staged a shooting and then lied to the police about it. Hallo? Why has it taken more than one week to lock up those scumbags?

Everyone who saw Harun Mwau’s vehicle after the alleged shooting knows that the damn thing was staged. It was staged so poorly that even the two actors couldn’t perform the skit. Everyone could see the driver’s smirk when questioned how the six bullets could have struck very close to the car handle, with some bullets exiting on the passenger side door without touching either the driver or the body guard. They had no answers on how the driver’s window could be completely shattered with glass falling onto the seat where he sat during the ‘shooting’, yet he emerged unscathed.

Moreover, Iteere himself had declared that the way the shooting was supposed have occurred defies all laws of velocity (or was it ‘the law of munition’?).

The police only need ‘probable and reasonable basis’ to believe that a crime has been committed for them to arrest and charge a suspect. In the Mwau incident, there were a zillion ‘reasonable and probable cause’ to believe that the two actors had manufactured the story and lied to the police. Those are two charges right there. A third charge is the illegal use of firearm. A fourth one is ‘conspiracy to defeat the course of justice.’ Others would naturally follow after their arrests.

This brings me to the unforgivable cold-blooded murder of Mercy Keino. Why do I insist it was a cold-blooded murder? The story, as narrated by the local media, is pretty straight forward. A beautiful young female university student is invited out by her cousin. They arrive in Westlands late evening and are‘welcomed’ by two studs who, by all accounts are either pimps or drug enforcers. They meticulously interview the two young women, taking their personal details and identity documents. That’s clue number one.

At that point, a cautious, streets smarts girl would have started being suspicious. But Mercy is a rambunctious, naïve beauty who is eager to have a good time on a Friday evening. So, the two pimps or enforcers flag a taxi (a second clue) and take the girls to a ‘private’ party.

The party is warming up when they arrive. Curiously, the women outnumber men one to three. That’s clue number three.

Clue number four is the age-bracket of the ‘girls’; all range between nineteen and twenty five.
But there is ‘business’ to discuss with the middle-aged to elderly ‘business suits’ already seated and others arriving (clue number five).

Alcohol is flowing like the great Nile. Clue number six.

The only wrinkle is that Mercy is a teetotaler, yet alcohol is integral to the execution of the ‘business’ at hand. Clue seven.

Although the women outnumber men, the place is clearly swarming with heavily built security; armed and unarmed. This is the eighth clue.

Discussions veer towards the delicate and murky details of ‘transatlantic shipments of precious cargo.’ Whispers and codes used. Mercy is completely lost and starts getting restless. She wants to leave, NOW! That is the ninth clue.

But there is a problem; the ‘boss’, who has just arrived, cannot allow Mercy to leave. He thinks Mercy is dangerous. She has seen and heard too much. She is a risk the ‘business’ cannot take. He commands her to resume her seat and politely reminds her that she has two choices: ‘you either cooperate or you will become past tense.’ Mercy – naïve and boisterous – dares the ‘boss’ and attempts to leave. A scuffle ensues and Mercy is forcibly confined. She pretends to relax and engages in small talk. A few minutes later, she suddenly runs towards the exit.
The muscle men quickly grab her and force her back inside. Mercy has become a captive. By this time, she has resolved not to cooperate. Flashing before her is her fiancé and the wedding they had planned for December this year. ‘I can’t do this!’ she kept screaming. She took furtive glances at her cousin who was herself too scared to come to Mercy’s aid. Mercy is all alone now. The ‘boss’ has had enough. He orders his men to ‘feed her.’ She is forced to drink a cocktail of alcohol and other substances. This is clue number ten.

The effect was instant. The ‘boss’ gives a secret signal to his men. The exit suddenly opens for Mercy and she lunges at it. On reaching outside, the men tell her that they will call a taxi and ‘escort’ her home. She refuses but at this point, she has no options.
A sleek Mercedes ‘taxi’ dutifully arrives within minutes and Mercy is forced inside. What follows after this is well known to the underworld: rape, torture, strangulation and death. A few minutes later, the body is dumped on the busy Waiyaki Way. Clue number eleven.

Shortly thereafter, the ‘taxi’ is slowly driven into a hidden warehouse and its number plate removed. It is thoroughly vacuumed inside out and repainted. The number plate is transferred to another sleek Mercedes. Clue twelve.

A cover-up story is quickly manufactured and disseminated to senior editors in various media houses. Senior police officers are quickly roped in. Mercy is depicted as having been drunk, rowdy and reckless. A motor vehicle accident story has been carefully circulated. The media frenzy sets in. 'It was an accident!' they scream. The pathologist can’t tell the cause of death. That's predictable. The story is latched onto by the inept and corrupt police and press. The police officer that witnessed the autopsy has been transferred. Clue thirteen.

This was supposed to be an open and shut case. Yet the police haven’t arrested anybody for aggravated assault, forcible confinement, unlawful detention, battery and torture. These are crimes disclosed by various newspaper reports. Additionally, the police should charge somebody with murder. But the witnesses are scared shitless. They are only repeating the cover-up stories they were fed by the agents of the ‘boss’.
Why haven’t the police searched and examined all homes, offices, apartments, rooms, hotels, motels, vehicles, warehouses, depots – anything connected with everyone who was at the party? What about the Nyoyo Stadium where that Okello guy supposedly delivered a ‘bag’ after midnight on the day Mercy was murdered? Has it been combed? If not, why? With their criminal negligence of the Samuel Kamau Wanjiru murder case, the Police Commissioner is proving to Kenyans that he cannot deliver. Let truth be told: Mercy refused to be a drug mule and for that she had to die. It’s as simple as that. There you are: I’ve done it for my girls!

Source: www.the-star.co.ke/opinions/miguna-miguna/30135-get-off-your-fat-asses-i-say-to-the-kenya-police-

Lucky Dube-Taxman



What have you done for Mercy lately, Mr. Taxman?

Looks like Perry Miguna Mason has this simple open and shut case all sorted out!!! All that is left for him to have a quick word with DPP Tobiko to latch on the evidence and have someone arrested!!!

After collecting evidence gathered by some media hacks, Perry M Mason believes this was a murder and only falls short of naming the murderer!!

This article rightly points out there has been a concerted effort on the part of some to paint Mercy Keino as a drunk UoN female student with a "double life" who got what was coming to her. I too have taken note (without surprise) that efforts have been made to turn tides against her the victim; even as nothing that the authorities have said in this case adds up.

I would say that misogynist reflexes are at work in attempts to cast Mercy as though she had culpability in her own victimization. The blame rests squarely on those at that party who everybody knows (except the police of cause) have the information though to varying degrees that would break this case. But as we've all seen and understood, the police do not want this case broken at the behest of let me guess who? Forces of darkness for sure.



Race, gender and class cloud quest for justice


Published on 06/07/2011
By Peter Kimani

There are striking parallels in the narratives on the killing of university student Mercy Keino and the trial of former International Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the US. In the latter case, of course, to use the words of former French Culture minister Jack Lang, nobody died, which goes to express the sheer lack of compunction.

When Strauss-Kahn’s story first broke, the media went on a whirlwind, sniffing for tips of what may have really happened in New York’s Hotel Sofitel, as a band of feminists expressed their outrage over what one analyst called "misogynist reflexes." This alluded to the macho culture in France where flirting skills are somewhat seen as a mark of social refinement, although the whispers from women who alleged to have been mishandled by DSK, as the former IMF boss is popularly known in France, built to a deafening roar. One of those cases has now ended in court.

All this while, the chambermaid alleged to have been sexually assaulted by DSK, described as a decent and honest single mother, was in a safe-house, away from the public and press scrutiny. Images of a dishevelled, manacled DSK would cause an uproar in Paris where he was basically seen as a president-in-waiting, as his lawyers promised an aggressive legal onslaught to clear his name. This included hiring top private investigators to prise open his accuser’s past.

But they did not have to look far. Police reports of the inconsistencies in the victim’s account of the minutes and the hours after the alleged attack, including the suspect phone call to her alleged boyfriend (other accounts call him her husband), who is sitting in an Arizona prison for drug possession, fed the media frenzy. The woman is reported to have announced there were prospects of a payday if she pursued charges against her attacker.

In Kenya, the more grave crime of the killing of Keino would take at least one whole week for it to make to the Press, by which time she had been quietly buried, and a lot of forensic evidence destroyed. The initial reports painted Keino as a conscientious student who walked the straight and narrow path of life, with sights set on completing a graduate journalism course and settling down in marriage by the end of the year.

This narrative would be gradually revised so that even before soil could settle in her grave, her reputation had been called into doubt to portray her as a duplicitous student who lived a double life, dabbling in debauchery like most of her college peers. The police, and no less authority than the Police Commissioner himself, concluded she had walked in a drunken stupor to the road where she was crashed to death – even before toxicology reports could be released.

These narratives are persuasive, even in their deceptive simplicity. But they convey sophisticated manipulations that confirm race, gender and class issues still play out in dispensing justice. The narratives employ tropes that dehumanise victims so that their deaths, or denial of rights, do not feel tragic or unacceptable. Similar tricks are employed in situations of conflict as well, so that the senseless slaughter of civilians, euphemistically reduced to "collateral damage," are presented as an inevitable consequence of conflict in which they were, in any case, partisan, or somehow to blame.


This thread has been weaved through Keino’s narrative without contesting the validity of some of the claims. For instance, to the best of my knowledge, the police are yet to verify the so-called witness statement that somebody saw a young woman waving down vehicles in that ungodly hour, only to see a body lying on the road later.

The two segments of Waiyaki Way are not on the same level, and it is unlikely it was possible to see a body lying on the road from the alleged trajectory, in fading night light. The motive of Keino’s visit and her associates, considering these were hard-up students hanging out at a pricey pub, still remains a mystery.

To return to the issue of DSK and the chambermaid, there is the incontrovertible evidence that a sexual encounter did take place in that hotel-room, and which the victim insists was not consensual. That fact is not vitiated by other coincidences, such as the lies in her immigration application, or that her boyfriend-husband is a drug dealer. She should enjoy the full protection of the law.

But when the accused is a wealthy, white male, his testament is likely to carry the day. Even when beset by a history of aggressive sexual conduct, his story is perceived as more believable because he is what media theorists call a "privileged interviewee."

—The writer, a Standard editor, is the author of the novel, Before The Rooster Crows


www.standardmedia.co.ke/commentaries/InsidePage.php?id=2000038479&cid=15&

[quote .................The police gave The Standard the registration number of the vehicle, but the identity of the last registered owner has been withheld for legal reasons.

[/quote]

Honestly speaking this tells you how the Kenyan systems are corrupt and masters of impunity. This whole saga of Ms Keino's death will and has just started to take the wheels like the Mugabe's, Mbai's. JM, TM and so on and so on. Will we ever have a system that works where murders are taken to Jail. This could be a very obvious case but will the Kenya police unearth it? Let us wait and see anyways condolences to the bereaved family.

Our 'world renowned' sleuths already worked on this case the best way they know how and expecting them to do anything different is akin to squeezing water out of a stone. Besides, how many of those witnesses are still alive or even willling to put their lives on the line when the drug lord has everyone that matters in his payroll?

sadly, mercy's case is on its way to becoming another cold case.