Breakfast Crew: March 2007

CRIME WATCH

Thank you frustrated citizen for sharing your experiences.

My car’s wing mirror has been snatched a few times on Uhuru highway after 7pm. You can understand that the police can’t be everywhere and it dark but you feel helpless and frustrated as can do nothing about it. This morning on the highway, near KBC – two guys simultaneously yanked off both mirrors – the time was 7.50am right in the middle of traffic. If this is happening in broad daylight and the men in blue are barely 600m either side – what else should we expect next? This is one of the busiest roads in Nairobi and you don’t even feel safe anymore regardless of time of day.
Frustrated Citizen

Thanks to Preety for the following email.

Yesterday as I walked towards Globe round about, just past Meridian hotel, I noticed a guy falling on the road. I noticed he was one of the muggers I had earlier told you about, his nose was bleeding. He had tried to snatch something from somenone in his car but the victim was too fast and he punched him on the face. Yesterday the "boyz" (lets call them that for now) were so many and active. They ran up and down the Globe roundabout, trying to check if the doors had been locked. For the 30 minutes that I was there chilling for the mat all they did was run up and down. I told you they have been doing this for at least the last five years. Sometimes I think I am the only one who sees them, everybody else is not amused but me. They chased the cars up and down, the same boys of Garissa Lodge. Talk to the C.I.D or whoever is meant to take action, because innocent people will loose their valuables.

CRIME WATCH

Please keep your crime emails coming in because as you will read below crime in Kenya is becoming more serious and we need to stop these thugs. Please help us keep the whole of Kenya safe.

Chilling Eyewitness Account Of Coast Bus Hijacking. Hijackers "Inspected" Women Passengers' Private Parts With Torches Before Rape

I managed to track down an eyewitness of the ill-fated Coast Bus Hijacking that happened last weekend (Saturday night) and yesterday I sat horrified and sickened as he described in great detail his ordeal of pure horrendous terror in the hands of armed thugs, together with other passengers somewhere in the bush near Emali.

Let me say that some Kenyans live in ignorant bliss and seem to get very upset when served with the often unpalatable truth. One reader of the popular Mashada site got very upset reading my article on this issue which had been re-posted there by somebody. Especially when I revealed that Matatus in Nairobi are hijacked all the time and women passengers raped, sometimes in full view of the other passengers, this reader was sure that I had made up the whole thing and did not mince his words. He asked me to produce evidence, calling me a liar. He just could not believe that such a serious thing would go unreported or half-reported in the mainstream media.

Well, sir, if you are still out there reading this, here is a perfect example of something that was half-reported with all the gory details being carefully left out.

It is instructive that the Coast Bus headed for Mombasa from Nairobi, passed several police checks and on some of them thorough inspection for weapons was carried out. Our eyewitness believes that the weapons used in the incident were not on the bus until somewhere in Makutano (junction of Machakos Road and the main Nairobi Mombasa highway-where the sixth hijacker boarded the bus carrying a bulky bag). Interestingly after this point, the bus passed only one additional roadblock and then there were no more until the time the thugs took control of the bus at Emali. This clearly illustrates the fact that the gangsters had done their homework well. Even more interesting is the fact that one of them was seen by several passengers with a two-way radio similar to the ones the police use and was discreetly seen using it. Was he listening in on police communication?

Admittedly two way radios are common these days and anybody can acquire one, if they go through the proper licensing procedures. However in view of what happened that night, this is bound to raise lots of suspicion.

"I sat next to one of the hijackers," our eyewitness picks up the tale, "and he kept in fiddling with his mobile phone sending and receiving messages. He finally spoke to somebody on the phone, most probably the person he had been sending and receiving messages from, shortly before the gang took control of the bus. They spoke in Kikamba so I could not understand what they were saying."

"At Emali, I suddenly heard two loud gun shots and on looking up I realized that a man right at the front whom I had earlier noticed being very friendly to the policemen who boarded the bus to carry out searches at the road blocks, had shot dead the driver of the bus. The thug had even earlier conversed in Kalenjin to one of the policemen."

Passengers were then told to lie down on the floor of the bus and anybody who would show as much as their head would get shot immediately. The bus was then diverted and driven into the bushes for about 10 kilometres. Emali is before Kibwezi and Mtito Andei on the way to Mombasa from Nairobi.

Passengers were then ordered to surrender their mobile phones and cash. Our eyewitness says: "I was still on the floor when I heard a commotion with one of the thugs saying that a passenger had attempted to conceal their mobile phone. Again two shots rang out and I feared the worst. Later we discovered that miraculously both bullets had only grazed the top of his head and the man survived the ordeal." The would be victim may have been helped by the fact that the place was pitch dark and the only source of light were the powerful flash lights used by the thugs.

After the loot had been gathered, the entire luggage was taken down from the bus and the contents carefully inspected, anything of value was taken. At the end of the ordeal there was a confusion of all the personal effects from the various bags mixed together in one huge pile on the ground outside the bus.

The thugs then started literally stripping the women passengers naked and carefully inspecting their private parts with the powerful flash lights they were carrying. Our eyewitness says he thought he saw one of the thugs actually try to smell one of the women's private parts. A few women were dismissed as being "sick and infected." The women selected for rape were about four in number and the six thugs then raped them in turns using condoms. This clearly illustrates that they had come prepared, knowing exactly what they were going to do after they had robbed the passengers. This happened in the open field area where the bus had been stopped.

The women had earlier pleaded with the thugs not to carry out the rape but to no avail. Our eyewitness says that their desperate pleadings and begging still occasionally rings in his ears.

"Those guys can't have been human. All elements of being human had departed from them," the eyewitness quipped to this writer. The whole ordeal lasted about 3 hours.

What is frightening is that the arithmetic of the whole crime doesn't make any sense. Assuming that the bus was carrying about 70 passengers each carrying an average of Kshs 2,000 and a mobile phone (which would be sold at about 2,000 being so "hot") that would have yielded a total of Kshs 280,000. Assume that there was an extraordinarily high amount of cash on the bus and even double that figure and you would still get Kshs 560,000. Divide that by six and you get a paltry 93,333 for each gang member and that does not even take into account the costs of the operations and the fact that others who assisted would have had to be paid. Hardly the sort of money worth carrying out such a violent capital offence crime for. And that is the really scary thing about escalating crime in Kenya .

CAPITAL CRIME WATCH

I appreciate what you capital guys are doing about the insecurity issue. At the globe cinema round about there are 6-10 jamaas who snatch from people cars and guess what, they are the same guys who snatch from people on the first avenue Eastleigh, between 6th & 8th Street. They are very smart good lookin guys, who dress in well fitting jeans and light shirts. They are never caught or if they are, they always bribe to find their way out. They normally knock on your window or snatch anything from the car if the window is not closed. So, beware and alert different cops about the matter cos the Pangani ones wont do anything.
Thank you, Preety.

CRIME CUT DOWN

Police officers should be the people we turn to in times of trouble, but are they really trustworthy?

The Standard Newspaper (07.03.07) highlights a positive case where four police officers, from the Kerugoya Police Station, who were suspected to have been in collaboration with some gangsters in the Kirinynaga and Embu districts have been sacked.
The officers were said to have been linked to several armed robberies and were hiring out their guns to thugs.
The four police officers are yet to be charged.