• Rubia said in is High Court petition that the experience in detention where he got tortured affected his life with finality, sustaining disabilities that dragged him to his grave
•He died on Monday
The Moi-era torture and detention appear to have gradually squeezed the life of politician Charles Rubia to its last.
The first black Nairobi mayor, former Starehe MP and Cabinet minister died on Monday. He was 96.
Rubia was Starehe MP from 1969 to 1988 and served in Cabinet as Local Government Minister among other portfolios.
He fell off the good graces of former President Moi in 1987 when he joined his bosom friends Kenneth Matiba and opposition doyen Jaramogi Oginga Odinga to call for multi-party democracy.
Rubia was arrested in February 1987 on charges of financing the Mwakenya Movement, a group the government claimed was planning a coup.
He was also accused of working alongside church leaders to import guns to help the group achieve its objectives.
Following his arrest, Rubia was detained without trial at Nyayo House in Nairobi for about five days.
In the 1988 elections, he was rigged out in the parliamentary race with the returning officer announcing two different sets of results.
On March 3, 1990, alongside Matiba, Rubia addressed a news conference at Nairobi's Chester House to urge the Moi government to open the democratic space.
It triggered agitations that culminated into the famous Saba Saba rally at Kamukunji grounds.
He was picked on July 4 1990, three days to the rally and detained for nine months.
In a 2018 television interview, Rubia said that he underestimated the President and did not believe Moi could detain him.
"I must confess that I did not believe that Moi could detain me. I thought he would be a lot more understanding," he said.
This 'mistake' appear to have, in the long run, cost him his life.
President Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga led an outpouring of condolences to the Rubia family, describing him as a principled second liberation hero.
Raila described him as a consequential leader who “played a key role in the liberation struggle for our nation ... paid a great price for his stand ... [and] was detained at the height of the struggle but never wavered."
Uhuru described Rubia as "an icon of Kenya's vibrant multiparty democracy" who shall be missed.
Rubia's petition before the High Court demanding a historic Sh40 billion compensation for detention details the ordeal he underwent in the hands of Moi goons.
Rubia says in the petition that he was beaten, kept for long in dark underground cells in solitary confinement and had his private parts squeezed.
He equates his experience to that of Nazi Germany, quoting Austria-born essayist Jean Améry who survived Auschwitz, one of the most brutal concentration camps in Hitler's Germany.
During the detention, he says in the court papers, he would be kept in dark and very cold cells, stripped half-naked and forced to lie on cold floor slabs.
He was blindfolded and driven in circles, denied food and water for many days, denied medical treatment and subjected to poor and unhygienic sanitary conditions.
Rubia was only released two weeks later after doctors informed prison authorities that he was suffering and needed urgent medical attention.
The experience left him for dead and the vitality of his life kept dripping off with time. It affected his wife to her death, the papers said.
“... He underwent vigorous and prolonged treatment in Kenya and London. Despite this, the petitioner was left with severe disabilities in his speech [...] To date, the petitioner continues to receive treatment and shall continue to do so for the rest of his life,” the petition reads.
Moreover, he lost business opportunities and his well-established business estate diminished to nothingness, he claimed.
Rubia through his lawyers, among others, Irungu Kang'ata filed his case on January 15 2012 and it is yet to be determined.