The Anti-Terror Police Unit will today seek custodial orders to hold six senior NTSA managers for 30 days pending investigations into the registration of a car used in the Dusit attack.
They are motor vehicle registration official Antony Kadu, director of registration and licensing Jacquline Githinji and her deputy Cosmas Ngeso. They were arrested on Wednesday morning.
Others are clerical officers in charge of dispatching number plates Stephen Mbaka, a counterpart from the logbook transfer section and an official Nderitu Irving.
The ATPU rounded up 68 officers, mainly from the registration and licensing department at the road safety agency. They are linked to issuance of registration number KCN 340E to different motor vehicles. One of them a Toyota Ractis, which was used by Dusit hotel attackers on January 15. Twenty-one people died in the attack.
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Kadu requested his colleague Augustine Musembi to reissue the same registration number to the car used by the attackers. Musembi is in custody. He is alleged to have written to the Kamiti Maximum Prison to make the number plate.
A number of officers in Kamiti have also recorded statements over the registration saga. Most implicated the NTSA officers. Suspects lawyer Danstan Omari said ATPU’s is using delay tactics to continue holding the suspects illegally.
He said the state has no reason not to present the suspects in court in time. But state counsel Harrison Kiarie said the agency had arrested more than 60 people and investigations take long.
Kiarie had arrived in court in time but took time looking for the duty court. The ATPU arrived in the court five minutes to 5pm.
Senior principal magistrate Martha Mutuku directed the ATPU to present the suspects today because they appeared in court past 5pm.
The arrests and possible prosecution of the NTSA staff come weeks after President Uhuru Kenyatta directed that registration of vehicles will now fall under the Interior ministry. The NTSA was previously under the Ministry of Transport.
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