Sole female prisoner at Gamba Police Station recounts double tragedy, narrow escape from jaws of death

Margaret Apiyo

Lamu, Kenya: Sixty-year-old Margaret Apiyo will live to remember Saturday night; the day when she missed death by a whisker.

Apiyo was the only woman at the Gamba Police Station cells when it was attacked by a group of heavily armed men who killed a police officer and several inmates.

In a strange twist, the massacre has saved her. She has been held here for half a year without her relatives' knowledge. She was arrested and charged in a drug case when she made what was considered "a secret trip" from her native Nyanza to Lamu.

Sunday, a visibly shaken Apiyo narrated to The Standard how she escaped death during the three-hour ordeal.

The attackers, who the police say were heavily armed, killed eight prisoners. Apiyo described them as her sons and comrades "who I welcomed into the facility given I've stayed for long in this station".

Police said they could not release the identities of those killed until their kin are informed.

According to other inmates, the attackers caught the police by surprise and many officers ran away leaving the cells and gates open.

Joseph Matero, an inmate, said the attackers asked them to recite the Shahada, an Islamic creed.