Once notorious, powerful brothers who can no longer buy their freedom

Lawyer Cliff Ombeta (second left) with some of the Akasha familly members at the Mombasa Law Courts, January 30, 2017. [PHOTO:GIDEON MAUNDU/STANDARD].

As Ibrahim Abdalla Akasha choked on his own blood, bleeding out on a wet, cold and lonely stretch of a road in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, his last thoughts probably wandered past the image of his wailing wife, face sputtered with blood, to perhaps that the empire he had built would outlast rivals and outrun every law enforcement agency.

When he breathed his last in that European city, his eldest son Kamaldin, brought up in the murky ways of the world of crime, stepped into his bloody shoes. His second name was enough to make him the head of one of Africa’s most feared crime families.