• Just four months later a Parliamentary Select Committee under the Chairmanship of Eric Gor Sunguh, began work on the circumstances leading to the death of the late minister.
• The conduct of the PSC became one of the most disgraceful episodes in post-independence Kenyan history.
Image: COURTESY
Four-and-half- years after the body of Dr Robert Ouko, Kenya’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, was found near his Koru farm, the only person ever to be charged with his murder, District Commissioner Jonah Anguka, was acquitted on 29 July 1994 by Mr Justice Aganayana in the High Court Number of Kenya.
With Anguka’s acquittal, the search as to who killed Dr Robert Ouko and why might have ended and the story been consigned to the list of Kenya’s high profile unsolved murders.
But the Ouko murder story kept on changing.
GEORGE WAJACKOYAH
In April 1992 an article appeared in a British newspaper The Sunday Times.
In it a George Wajackoyah, who claimed to have been a former Special Branch Inspector at the time of Ouko’s murder, alleged that Ouko had been picked up from Koru by Hezekiah Oyugi and Nicholas Biwott in a white Mercedes backed up by two cars full of armed men.
Oyugi, said Wajakoyah, had broken Ouko’s ankle. He was then driven 90 miles to one of Moi’s homes, beaten, shot by Nicholas Biwott in front of President Moi and his body dumped at Got Alila two days later.
Wajackkoyah however wasn’t an ‘inspector’ in the Special Branch as he claimed and his story was all provably untrue.
Forensic evidence and eye-witness testimony proved Ouko was shot where his body was found on Tuesday February 13, 1990, he couldn’t have been shot at State House or anywhere else and his body dumped days later
Wajakoyah’s story was significant however.
It became a popularly believed “Shot at State House” theory about Ouko’s murder; it formed the basis for Anguka’s book Absolute Power and it seems to have influenced Anguka’s trial.
And together with Barrack Mbajah’s later testimony that Ouko had been ‘sacked’ and banished’ after the Washington trip it was adopted by the Parliamentary Select Committee investigation of 2004-05.
GOR SUNGUH AND THE PSC
In December 2002, after 24 years in power President Moi stood down as Kenya’s Head of State. He was replaced by Mwai Kibaki.
Image: COURTESY
Just four months later a Parliamentary Select Committee under the Chairmanship of Eric Gor Sunguh, began work on the circumstances leading to the death of the late minister.
Was this the “diligent and impartial” inquiry Troon had called for? Absolutely not. The conduct of the PSC became one of the most disgraceful episodes in post-independence Kenyan history.
The Parliamentary Select Committee’s lack of impartiality was demonstrated from the outset by the Committee’s Chairman Gor Sunguh’s speech to the House of Assembly on 19 March 2003, moving the motion to set up the Committee.
“Upon his return from the national prayer breakfast, Sunguh declared, like a dog, the late Dr Ouko was sent packing to his home. His bodyguards were dismissed; he was left a lonely man...”
Note, Gor Sunguh, the committee’s chairman, made these statements before the PSC had sat, before he had heard one word of testimony, and before he had seen one piece of evidence.
Even to disagree with this story was to be labeled “not a witness of truth” by the Select Committee.
BRINER-MATTERN THE ‘STAR WITNESS’… AND UGANDAN PROSTITUTES
When Marianne Briner-Mattern, the PSC’s ‘star witness’ (and Troon’s) appeared in front of the PSC, her testimony was bizarre.
Out went Briner-Mattern’s tale of corruption over the Kisumu Molasses project. Now she said she could tell the real story!
Briner-Mattern now alleged that Dr Ouko may have been murdered because he knew dark secrets about President Moi’s private life - in particular that he was being supplied with Ugandan prostitutes for his pleasure.
Briner-Mattern told the PSC: “…the Ugandan girls which was organized and kept at the disposal of the former President… They were kept after arrival in Kenya under isolation until their visit to State House was confirmed. Dr. Ouko also knew about them like other insiders. He told me once about the rumours…”
Her dramatic change of testimony didn’t end there. She went on to make another sensational claim –that she had had an “intimate” relationship with President Moi.
“I had a relationship with that man once”, Briner-Mattern said, “I do not know if you understand this; if you once loved somebody, you will believe in him; you have to realize that you may have loved the wrong man”.
So, why did Briner-Mattern suddenly and dramatically change her testimony? The answer is that she had to. Briner-Mattern changed her story because she knew the game was up: too many people knew the truth about her and her fake company.
But Briner-Mattern got away with it because the PSC under Gor Sungugh wouldn’t allow the proper cross-examination of some witnesses.
Lawyer Paul Muite, who for a time served on the PSC,interviewed for the ‘Murder at Got Alila’ documentary, said: “And the final straw came when this lady (Mattern) was summoned to come and give evidence which was going to implicate Nicholas Biwott adversely… surely, the lawyers for Nicholas Biwott should have been permitted to cross examine the lady? But no, he straight away brought rules that he will not allow the lawyers of Nicholas Biwott to cross examine the witness”.
Muite had had enough and resigned, as did others.
“First of all I agreed to be a member because there was unfinished business about the assassination of Robert Ouko… But over time I came to the conclusion that our chairman, Gor Sunguh was out of his depth in chairing a committee of this nature”.
During the Select Committee proceedings five members of the Committee resigned and four others moved on to other appointments. They were replaced but of the final 10 members of the Committee, four of whom did not sign the Committee’s report.
TRUTH, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION?
The search for the truth as to who killed Dr Robert Ouko and why did not end with the Parliamentary Select Committee’s investigation.
Image: COURTESY
Kenya’s hotly-disputed presidential election of December 2007 sparked a wave of violent protests in which over 1,400 people died and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes.
In the aftermath of the post-election violence, Kenya’s parliament set up The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights and historical abuses in the country since independence in 1963, including the murder of Dr Robert Ouko.
The basis of the TJRC’s report into Ouko’s murder, published in May 2013, was still Troon’s Final Report.
The TJRC’s conclusions, however, didn’t take the search for truth over Ouko’s murder much further: ‘Based on the limited information available before the Commission, we are unable to shed any light on the identity of Ouko’s killers.”’
Like Troon, the TJRC called for further investigations but as we have seen, the Commission did come to one entirely provable conclusion: ‘In addition, the Washington Trip theory revolves around a private meeting with President Bush and Ouko that never actually occurred’.
But how was this crucially important finding, that there was no meeting between President Bush and Dr Ouko during the Washington trip, get reported the next day? The front page of The Daily Nation, reported the exact opposite: ‘Ouko Killed After Meeting with President Bush’ ran The Nation’s front-page headline.
How did it come to this?
22 ½ years after Ouko’s murder; after two police investigations, three inquiries, and two trials “no light” could be “shed” on who killed him and why. And where the truth was known it was often ignored, and where it was revealed it was often ignored, dismissed or misreported.
My investigations and research suggest that almost certainly, Robert Ouko’s murderers are still alive.
But could they be prosecuted today? Could a review of the existing evidence, added to the information that has come to light in more recent years lead to a conviction? Could modern DNA techniques, for example, still provide an answer as to who killed Dr Robert Ouko?
With the latest advances in DNA technology and a properly impartial and diligent investigation into Dr Robert Ouko’s murder, it might still be possible to identify his killers, or at least to exonerate the innocent and to find the truth.
Beyond doubt that the story we were told for so-long about the murder of Dr Robert Ouko was wrong, often based on lies and the story recounted greatly distorted.
Much of the truth based on new evidence, past testimony and the accounts of living witnesses, is out there in the public domain but is there really the will in today’s Kenya to find out the whole truth?
Is Kenya a country that is afraid to confront its past? Or do people want to hear the oft-told story rather than the truth?
Martin Minns produced the documentary Murder at Got Alila: Who killed Dr Robert Ouko and why?