Nairobi businessman declines to submit gun, claims life in danger

NAIROBI COUNTY: A Nairobi businessman has declined to surrender his gun to police as directed and instead complained that his life was in danger.

Police had ordered Bryan Yongo to surrender his pistol, citing alleged misuse in his home in Kitsuru, Nairobi two weeks ago. He declined and instead moved to court where be obtained an order stopping the authorities from confiscating it.

Yongo said on the material day on July 2, he was driving home when he realised a car was trailing him. When he arrived home and waited for a short while for his gate to be opened, the guards did not respond. This forced him to reach for his gun and shoot once in the air to wake them up. Neighbours later reported the matter to the police. And when police arrived at his compound the following day to record a statement and take away the weapon, they did not find him or get the weapon.

The businessman protested the police action as malicious and abuse of office. He later served the officers with an order issued by Justice George Odunga who restrained them from taking away the weapon. This was after police wrote to him saying they had revoked his firearm certificate. In his suit papers, Yongo says his life and that of his family have previously been threatened and that the officers’  move was in breach of Article 47 of the Constitution, which quotes right to fair administrative action.

He added that a complainant in the case, Hiten Shah, was known to him and that he had another case against him of alleged threat to his life.

MISUSE OF GUNS

Nairobi police boss Benson Kibue said Yongo’s case is among those they are investigating. “We have almost six cases of misuse of guns under investigations. We will recommend various charges once investigations are complete,” said Kibue.

Among them is one in which businessman James Kariuki has been asked to surrender his firearm after he shot and wounded a guard who was responding to an alarm at a private compound last week in Karen. The incident came a day after businessman Paul Kobia alias Paul Ilunga Ngoei, the man named in a UN report over Congo gold smuggling claims, shot dead a robbery suspect along Parklands’ Limuru Road in an alleged botched robbery.

Earlier last month, a senior manager with ICEA was arrested and charged with murder after he shot and killed a motorist and injured another one in a road rage incident in Dagoretti area, Nairobi.

In Parklands, a police reservist was in June disarmed by security guards after he shot in the air in a bid to force his way into a women’s hostel. Police said the man was dropping a female student at the Executive Ladies Hostel.

When the guards prevented him from driving his vehicle into the hostel grounds, he took out a pistol and fired in the air twice. Police arrested him before they seized the pistol, three magazines and 90 bullets, a police radio, his firearm’s certificate, a beret and a Kenya Police Reservist Identity Card. The firearms licensing section of the police has been opened after it was briefly closed for re-organisation amid graft claims.