•The mother revealed that she hard started an appeal process for her son and had already enlisted a lawyer, only to be hit with the news of the escape.
• As a boy, he was hardworking, polite and generous, but later became wayward. After he converted to islam, he regarded his parents as non believers.
Image: COURTESY
Patrick Odhiambo, the father of convicted terrorist Joseph Juma Odhiambo, wants the government to give his son a merciless sentence for attempting to escape from Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
He believes that for his terror links and his escape from jail, 30-year-old Juma, aka Yusuf, should be behind bars for a long time.
"And when he is finally freed, he will be shown my grave site," his father told the Star.
That is, if Juma does not return in a coffin himself.
“Because of what he did, the government should add more years on top of the ones he was serving. He will find me long dead and buried. He will only be shown my grave," his father said.
Patrick said his son deserves a harsher punishment because of his wayward ways that started in his childhood; he said efforts to return him to the straight and narrow always hit a brick wall.
Juma scored 336 marks in the KCPE exams he sat in 2008 at Mukhwala Primary school but did not continued his education. His twin sister, however, went ahead with her studies and is currently in college, Patrick Odhiambo said.
Juma loved money when he was young. In Classes 5 and 6, he would plant sukuma wiki, sell the harvest and save the money.
His father said that growing up in Ejinja area of Matungu in Kakamega, his young son was polite, hardworking and generous. But because of his stammering, he never spoke much.
With time, Juma grew obstinate, like many teenagers, and rejected direction and guidance from his parents.
After school, he slipped into Uganda where he sold scrap scrap metal.
Not long afterward, the father of two returned to Kenya and sided with his mother, Florence Odhiambo, who had separated from his father and lives in Kibra, Nairobi.
“So he chose his mother [over me] and went to stay close to her in Nairobi,” his father said.
In Nairobi, his mother helped him get a security guard’s job at Mugoya, South C. This is where he became a soft target for radical teachings and converted to Islam.
From that time on, Juma — now with a new name ‘Yusuf’— regarded his parents and siblings as unbelievers (wakafir) and insisted on puritan religious views.
In 2012, he told his mother he was quitting his job and moving to Mombasa to study religion. His mother refused.
“I told him not to go. I refused to let him go and told him that I brought him to Nairobi for work, not to leave my hands to go to Mombasa. Instead of going to Mombasa, just go back home,” Florence said.
Later that very year, Juma was arrested with another man in Liboi, Garissa, allegedly on their way to Somalia to joining terror group al Shabaab.
He was charged and ordered to pay a fine of Sh30,000 or spend six months in jail.
The parents said their son served the jail term because his family was impoverished.
“He said, 'Mama, sorry I have been stubborn. Just pray for me to serve the jail term and I will be back," Florence said.
Shortly after being released from jail, Juma returned to Somalia, got arrested and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He was arrested on November 21, 2019, in Bulla Hawa in Somalia on his way to enlist as an al Shabaab fighter.
His mother revealed she had started an appeal process for her son and had already enlisted a lawyer — only to be hit with the news of the escape.
Juma, alongside Musharaf Abdallah and 2015 Garissa University College terror attack convict Mohamed Ali Bikar escaped from the condemned Block A of Kamiti Prison on Monday, November 15.
It is believed they had inside help from wardens who have been arraigned.
A multi-agency security team launched a massive manhunt for them, putting a Sh20 million bounty on each of the heads.
Their short-lived freedom ended on Thursday last week when they were arrested in Kitui on their way to Boni Forest on the way to Somalia.
For further stories on the escape, see Page 7.
(Edited by V. Graham)