•Chief magistrate Evans Makori asked DCI to investigate missing Sh30 million heroin from exhibit store.
• Police arrested Makori's junior principal magistrate Edgar Kagoni on Saturday.
Image: ANDREW KASUKU
Mombasa chief magistrate Evans Makori was the whistle-blower in the disappearance of Sh30 million heroin at the Mombasa Court.
The missing narcotics led to the arrest of his junior principal magistrate Edgar Kagoni on Saturday.
He is the biggest judicial fish netted so far in the Coast's renewed war on drugs.
Makori wrote to regional DCI boss Washington Njiiru on August 8 to request investigations into the exhibit that was reported missing from the exhibit store on July 26.
In the letter, Makori said the exhibits of the criminal case no 468 0f 2018 Republic verses Hussein Massoud Eid and two others went missing between June 28 and July 26.
The criminal case in which Eid was being charged with possession of the narcotics was presided over by Kagoni.
“Internal investigations carried out cannot yield who may be capable,” read the letter from Makori to the DCI.
Njiiru then wrote to his bosses in Nairobi on August 13, acknowledging receipt of the complaint from Makori.
After weeks of investigations, DCI agents arrested Kagoni, who was apparently taken by surprise, and booked him at Kilindini police ptation.
Also arrested were Abdalla Awadh Abubakar, an executive assistant at the Mombasa Law Courts, who is held at Makupa Police Station; Lawrence Thoya Bayan, support staffer at the court booked at Nyali police station, and Onesmus Miinda Momanyi, a court assistant at Ruiru law courts.
The four are latest to be arrested in the war on drugs at the Coast.
In a letter to newsrooms on Friday, the Director of Public Prosecutions said Kagoni faces charges of obstruction with intent to defeat justice and aiding and abetting trafficking in narcotics.
The three court officials face charges of "stealing by persons in Public Service ... in relation to the 10.022kg heroin valued at Sh30 million and cash valued at over Sh600,000."’
During court proceedings, Kagoni had turned down police requests to keep the exhibits because of the large quantities involved. Instead he allowed court assistant Momanyi to take control of the exhibits on December 4, 2018, at the exhibits register [and tke] the same exhibits to the store the day after.
On June 11, 2019, Kagoni sentenced the suspect Eid to 30 years in prison and fined him Sh90 million.
He then ordered Sh600,000 returned to the convict, violating the Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1994 that requires forfeiture of the seized property upon conviction.
The DPP also said the money and the drugs exhibits were found to be missing between June 28 and July 26, prompting the chief magistrate to lodge a complaint to the Mombasa-based Coast DCI headquarters.
Thus far, scores of drugs networks leaders have been held and kilograms of bhang, heroin and cocaine seized.
"We will turn things upside down to unearth even those among security apparatus and highly placed state officials that have been shielding drug traffickers," Interior CS Fred Matiang'i said on August 11 hen launching latest "war".
(Edited by V. Graham)