Ouko murderers yet to be brought to book

By John Oywa

He was kidnapped from his home and brutally murdered 19 years ago.

But few people would spare a thought for Dr John Robert Ouko, the man who once shaped Kenya’s foreign policy.

Slain Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko. He served in the Cabinet for 20 years before he was brutally killed in February 1990.

Speaking at Lambwe during Last week’s burial of Mrs Pamela Mboya, Lands Minister James Orengo said: "Kenyans have forgotten that the bullet that killed Robert Ouko and Tom Mboya came from the State."

He claimed that on the day Ouko went missing from his home, the only item entered at the local police station’s Occurrence Book was an incident where a swarm of bees had attacked police officers.

To the officers, he said, a disappearance of a Cabinet minister was no serious matter.

On Sunday, as Ouko’s relatives quietly marked the day he went missing, his fortified Koru home, once bustling with political supporters, stood forlornly in the midst of a vast sugar farm on the Muhoroni-Koru road.

The outer gate where the infamous ‘white car’ waited to ferry him to his death, remained closed, just as it was on that fateful night of February 13, 1990, as if enclosing its secret.

Behind the former minister’s bungalow where he was said to have been "cornered and captured like a goat," lies his grave.

Superintendent John Troon: He was called in from Britain to help investigate the murder.

Little has changed at the home but it remains neat with bright flowers dotting the compound. Many of the structures mentioned in investigation reports and commissions remain intact.

Most of the workers at the home are new and do not know much about the Ouko mystery. "Please talk to mama, she is at home," one farmhand told us when we stopped to speak to her.

But across the fence, the Ouko family members and workers can see the scenic Got Alila Hill as it towers into the sky.

To visitors, the hill is a beauty to behold. To the locals, Got Alila spells terror and evokes bitterness. It reminds them of grief and the deafening drone of military helicopters that rumbled over their homes as the Government investigated the murder of their high profile neighbour.

It was at the foot of this hill, near Koru in Nyando District, that herds boy Joseph Shikuku, found the grotesque and charred remains of the minister on February 16, 1990, after he went missing for three days.

With eyes gouged out and legs broken, the scene was spine chilling. The skull had also been crushed and the torso set on fire. Beside the body lay a jerrican, a leather jacket, a revolver, a torch and a sword.

The initial theory by Government was that he had committed suicide, a suggestion that angered many Kenyans and never lasted for a day.

Crime experts have over the years opined that a helicopter might have been used to drop the body at the scene after probable cruel torture and foul murder.

Dorothy Randiak (left), Ouko’s sister, and other mourners grieve after the minister was killed in 1990. Photos: File/Standard

But with most of the people who held most crucial information regarding Ouko’s murder now dead, chances that Kenyans would ever identify his killers remain slim.

The farm where the smouldering body was found is now a sugar cane plantation.

When we visited the farm on Sunday, it was impossible to locate the exact spot where the body was found. Shikuku has since died and his relatives, who live near the spot where the body was, would not speak about the matter.

Government investigators and Scotland Yard detectives from Britain had erected a metal beacon on the site but it has since been uprooted.

Residents appear to have forgotten the murder and do not want to discuss it.

"Ok wanyal wuoyo e wachno sani. Wakia gima timore (We can’t talk about the issue now. We don’t know what is happening)," said a resident.

Mr Collins Seda, one of Ouko’s brothers, last year told The Standard: "We have been waiting for justice for 18 years but the Government seems to have forgotten about Dr Ouko and his family," said Seda.

The home he built

Ouko had employed several workers at his home but those who gave evidence to the investigating teams over events at the home on the night he disappeared include: Ms Selina Were Ndalo, the house help, who said she saw the white car said to have been used to kidnap Ouko; Mr Erasto Olang’, the poultry store keeper; Mr Philip Rodi, the store man and Administration policeman Zablon Agalo Obonyo who guarded the home.

At Nyahera, on the outskirts of Kisumu where Ouko was born, the home he built there before he moved to Koru has been sold. The home, that sits next to that of his late mother has been turned into an orphanage.

In 2006, Ouko’s brothers led by Barack Mbajah, who is now in the US, unsuccessfully tried to stop Ouko’s widow from selling the home.

In Kisumu, a shop named Shoe Den that belonged to Ouko and which featured prominently during a commission of inquiry headed by the now Chief Justice Evan Gicheru has since been sold.

Ouko, who was 58 at the time of his death, was a Cabinet minister for 20 years since the days of the first East African Community.

President Moi described him as "the best Foreign Minister Kenya has had" in a statement issued on February 16, when he announced the shocking news about the minister’s death.

Personalities of note

As the wheels of justice continue to drag, several people who were linked to the Ouko death investigation have since died.

They include former PS for Internal Security and Provincial Administration, Hezekiah Oyugi, former Police Commissioner Phillip Kilonzo, former Nyanza PC Julius Kobia, former Assistant Commissioner of Police Nehemiah Ombati and a former High Court Judge Mohammed Aslam, who was trying former Nakuru DC Jonah Anguka over the death.

Others were Mr Apollo Jakaiti, Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police who was in-charge of Forensics at the Gor Sunguh-led committee and Mr Joseph Okoth Moi, a Superintendent of Police.

Also attached to the committee was one of Ouko’s employees, Mr Joseph Yogo, among others.