•Wanjiru worked as a sex worker in Nanyuki town and lost her life after spending the evening entertaining a soldier in a hotel.
•ODPP said there is an MOU between Kenya and British Army Training Unit.
Image: COURTESY
We were following the Agnes Wanjiru case long before the foreign media exposed everything, Director of Public Prosecutions has said.
Wanjiru worked as a sex worker in Nanyuki town and lost her life after spending the evening entertaining a soldier in a hotel.
Her decomposed body bearing stab wounds was discovered three months later in a septic tank at the hotel. The officer was said to have left the country at the time of discovery.
The murder was exposed last month by UK-based Sunday Times newspaper.
Speaking during a workshop in Mombasa, chief of staff Lilian Obuo said they reviewed the file last year.
“We reviewed the file in December 7, 2020. We have been working on the case. In fact there were meetings of how we could extradite the officers since it involves foreign relations,” Obuo said.
Obuo said there is an MOU between Kenya and British Army Training Unit.
“We are hoping that the suspects will be extradited to Kenya so that the case is handled by our own courts since the aggrieved are also here,” she said.
“We are committed to ensure that the case is investigated and prosecuted and that there is justice," she added.
She said when the file was first brought to the ODPP last year, the office identified some gaps and asked the investigators to work on them.
She said though some of those gaps have since been addressed, the matter is still under active investigation.
Wanjiru's family has instructed a London-based law firm to sue UK's Ministry of Defence for failure to take action against one of its soldiers who allegedly murdered their kin in 2012 in Nanyuki.
Tessa Gregory, partner at London-based law firm Leigh Day confirmed that Wanjiru's relatives had instructed it to take legal action against the defence ministry.
“We are instructed by the family of Wanjiru to challenge the Ministry of Defence's failure to investigate her alleged murder in 2012," he said.
The identity of a British soldier who allegedly stabbed Wanjiru to death before dumping her body in septic tank in 2012 is widely known in the army.
According to The Sunday Times, five soldiers from the unit gave the same name belonging to soldier X.
After a night of partying in 2012, the naked body of Wanjiru, who left behind a five-month-old daughter, was found at the Lions Court Inn hotel in Nanyuki by a worker who noticed a foul smell.
In the investigations done by The Sunday Times, soldiers who took part in the drunken night with local prostitutes said they were shown Wanjiru’s’ body that evening.
Her fingers and toes were missing due to advanced decomposition. She had a 2cm stab wound to her lower right abdomen and a blunt force injury to her chest. Her lungs had collapsed.