Philip Murgor, the former Kenyan director of public prosecutions, has called for a fresh inquiry into the 2004 cocaine bust that saw the conviction of David Mugo Kiragu but the other indicted suspects found not guilty.
Writing in a guest column for The Nation newspaper, he hints at corruption during the police force’s investigation into the seized drugs and accuses the police of stifling the subsequent prosecution. He wants the major players who got away in December 2004 actively pursued, with the assistance of international drug agencies and law enforcement.
He points out that although police had been tipped off by a Dutch drug agency about the shipment - Kiragu’s brother, for one, was based in Holland - they sat on the information for a couple of days. This gave the drug barons enough time to leave the Malindi beach house where the drugs were being kept, fly to Nairobi though the international airport, stay the night at a hotel and then escape the country the next day.
Suspicions were raised that they were given safe passage by officials and “[s]ubsequent evidence indicated that some of the foreign suspects may have received preferential treatment at the Immigration Department.” While Murgor doesn’t think Kiragu fits the profile of a drug baron - even though it has been reported elsewhere that according to his friends he did have plenty of cash to spray around and was quite involved in the drug ring - it does sound plausible that the much bigger players are still out there, running free.
As for his charges that police interfered with the prosecution, the following certainly doesn’t help the police’s image:
The police rejected the appointment of a competent and specially trained prosecutor in anti-narcotics investigations and prosecutions. Skeleton investigation files finally received reflected shoddy investigations with vital evidence missing. At some point, police resisted an attempt to bring in experts from the United Nations to assist in the investigations and prosecutions.