- His wife Milen Mezgebo was also present during the meeting at the DCI headquarters.
- Mezgebo said they had not heard from authorities on the whereabouts of Teklemichael.
Image: HANDOUT
A group of human rights organisations and the family of a missing Ethiopian businessman Samson Teklemichael have met the Director of Criminal Investigations boss Mohamed Amin.
The group led by the Police Reforms Working Group wanted to know the whereabouts of the businessman, who went missing on November 19, 2021.
His wife Milen Mezgebo was also present during the meeting at the DCI headquarters.
Mezgebo said they had not heard from authorities on the whereabouts of Teklemichael.
She however said they are hopeful that the new regime will solve the issue.
“I have spoken to the DCI and I am hopeful my husband is alive,” Mezgebo said.
She said she had contemplated leaving Kenya but after the new government took over, she changed her mind.
Mezgebo said she and her husband were investors in the energy sector as they supplied LPG gas to Ethiopia.
“I want justice for my husband because those who took him were not thugs but government officials. Traffic police were present when it happened,” she said.
Representatives of the organisations said they support her to get to the bottom of the matter.
Amnesty International Kenya director Irungu Houghton said they need to address the issue and other missing persons matters.
“The leaders here have pledged cooperation,” he said.
The meeting also discussed police reforms at large and the way forward.
Amin reportedly assured them of his support.
Teklemichael had been in Kenya for close to 16 years.
His friends and business partners said he had established a strong empire that had grown to a multi-million shilling entity.
He exported gas to Addis Ababa where he had established a base for further distribution.
In Nairobi, he had a gas distribution centre specifically for his market in Ethiopia. He moved to Nairobi in 2009.
Mezgebo said her husband is a reputable businessman who exports gas cylinders to Ethiopia and that he had not expressed fears over his life.
“We have never been under any investigation while here. We lived a quiet life and Kenya is our home and all her children were born in Nairobi,” she said.
“My husband was to turn 39 in December last year and we planned a big party to celebrate that.”
Teklemichael loved life and drove high-end cars. He frequented a popular car wash along Lenana Road where attendants described him as a generous man.
Other friends said he kept in touch with his Tigray friends in Addis Ababa and abroad. This is perhaps, what they suspect could be the reason for his abduction.
He is of Tigray origin.
The friends said he never expressed fears and concern over the ongoing chaos in his country amid the arrest and detention of those from his region.
There have been speculations that Teklemichael was shipped out of the country to Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian embassy in Nairobi did not respond to queries about the abduction incident.
Teklemichael was abducted as he was driving his Bentley car and was stopped in broad daylight and later removed by other men in civilian clothes.
He was later dragged into a Subaru car as other road users recorded the drama.
The abductors left his car at the scene along a road in Kileleshwa only for the wife to be informed by a friend that her husband's car had been parked in the middle of the road and she later picked it up.
The family has not been contacted and is pleading with authorities to help locate him.
Teklemichael was heard in a video pleading with witnesses at the scene to record his capture.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris