When guns and sirens were finally muted, hard-nosed investigators scoured the scene of disaster with a tooth comb. Of interest to the sleuths was the exact place where the madness started. Huge parts of the complex were a scene of crime not to be tampered with.
Painfully, the investigators separated pieces of broken glass, twisted metal, clothes and what looked remains of victims and terrorists. Each piece of exhibit collected at dusitD2 Hotel was meticulously labelled and bagged for forensic analysis.
Several hours after the attack and as families of victims went through identification, the investigators hit the dirt. Among samples collected from the scene was a finger whose prints were matched with another set in criminal registry records.
This, security sources disclose, is how 25-year-old Riziki Mahir Khalid was identified as the man who blew himself up at Dusit complex to trigger the January 15 terror attack, which left over 21 people dead.
But how did the investigators identify the terrorist whose body had been torn into tiny pieces by the powerful blast? The identification to some observers was like a miracle in a country where bodies have been in mortuaries for months, unclaimed because they had just been labelled “unidentified African male or female” even as relatives combed every nook and cranny in desperate search of their loved ones.
The pain of a missing person’s family is epitomised by the case of Dandora human rights activist, Caroline Mwatha. After looking for her for over a week, the relatives were horrified when they found her body at City Mortuary. The body had a tag identifying her as Carol Mbeki.
The puzzle was resolved when fingerprints lifted from the body were taken to the database at the Civil Registration Bureau. When the prints were analysed and matched, the riddle of the whereabouts of Mwatha, whose disappearance was threatening to set aflame Dandora, was resolved. The prints matched with those she had submitted while applying for her national identity card.
Real answer
This is the data collected from every Kenyan who attains age of 18 when applying for the national ID card.
Principal Criminal Registrar Patrick Ndunda says even in a rapidly changing world the real answer is in the fingerprintsand palms of every Kenyan.
“No fingerprints of two different persons in the whole world are identical even if you are twins. God has never lacked classification of fingerprints for each child each day in the world,” says Ndunda.
But while the civil registration bureau collects data from all Kenyans, the DCI collects fingerprints from people charged in court for various crimes. “Our database has nine million finger prints. When you commit a crime and you are taken to a court of law your fingerprints are taken and filed with Criminal Registration Bureau,” says Ndunda.
Once an accused person is convicted, the registrar explains, the fingerprints are retained but if are freed, they are expunged. In the case of a conviction, a file is opened and the fingerprints stored for future reference as was the case in Dusit suicide bomber.
So definitive is the science of fingerprints that experts around the world rely on it even in the face of technological leaps, which have digitised and automated various aspects of life. “Faces can lie or they can be altered. Passwords and computer systems can be hacked or by-passed but fingerprints cannot be compromised,” the expert says.
Fingerprints are left in a scene when a person touches a surface. The prints can survive in a scene for a long time as long as there is no interference such as wiping or washing the surfaces. They are then lifted using chemicals and forensic methods and analysed.
“I have been a fingerprints expert for 29 years and I have never witnessed a case where fingerprints failed to identify a victim,” Ndunda says.
Unidentified body
“There should be nothing like an unidentified body in our mortuaries as long as the victim has a national identity card.”
The Principal Criminal Registrar explains that this method has successfully applied in identifying victims in past tragedies as happened in Dusit, the Garissa University terror attack where over 147 were killed, Sinai fire tragedy in Nairobi as well as the Naivasha fire disaster.
After the April 2015 Garissa University attack, the DCI investigators lifted fingerprints from the bodies and at the scene, which were used to identify all those who died. Only in the case where victims’ fingerprints were inaccessible because they had been burnt severely was DNA used.
But if fingerprint identification is an exact science which does not admit mistakes or doubts, why has it not been applied to eliminate fraud in Kenya where banks and insurance companies have been losing over Sh4 billion annually?
Ndunda says they have been telling banks to use fingerprintsin curbing fraud but they have been hesitant because of the perception by their clients that it is for illiterate people. “Affixing of thumbprints in Kenya has for a long time been viewed as as a sign of illiteracy. That is why despite all bank account holders having been issued with IDs, many abhor using fingerprints, which are fool proof.”
The requirement that land documents also bear the fingerprints of the owner has defeated some schemes by imposters who secretly steal land in Central, Nairobi and Rift Valley regions by making fake documents, which they use to dispossess the rightful owners.
The perception that fingerprint is backward can be traced to 1909 when the Criminal Records Bureau was established by the British East African police and was used for the issuance of the hated Kipande.
In the last few years the Criminal Registration Bureau has automated its services and hopes to decentralise its activities such that all counties can access and file fingerprints from their respective field offices online.
