- He failed to take plea last December after his lawyer Danstan Omari told the court that he was indisposed at Madina Hospital in Eastleigh.
- Omari further told the court that the officer has not been personally served with summons.
Image: HANDOUT
Crime buster Rashid Ahmed is set to take plead on Thursday morning at Milimani law courts in a case in which he is alleged to have shot two men at close range in 2017.
He failed to take plea last December after his lawyer Danstan Omari told the court that he was indisposed at Madina Hospital in Eastleigh.
The police Sergeant who is based at Pangani police station got indicted by police oversight body Ipoa late last year in the murder of two men in March 2017.
He is accused of shooting dead Jamal Mohamed and Mohamed Dahir in Eastleigh on March 31, 2017.
The indictment of Rashid by Ipoa is seen by many in the civil society world as progress in holding trigger-happy cops accountable.
Calls for the prosecution of Rashid have been raging for a while, with many people fingering him for his alleged violent style of policing in the Mathare and Dandora slums.
For example, Mary Kamau a Mathare resident, claims that his 15-year-old son was allegedly gunned down by Rashid Ahmed in 2017 for engaging in crime. For her, the man's love for the bullet is diabolical.
Kamau says it is "true my son Njoroge was a thief. But I did not like it either, and loved him still."
She says that Rashid’s style is to approach the parent of the suspect and warn them to get him or her out of the area or they will get him dead.
“He warned me but I pleaded with him to help the boy be rehabilitated or let him rot in jail, but not kill him. There’s no reverse in that. It didn’t take two weeks before I found my boy lying in a pool of his blood.”
In the case of the two boys, Ipoa had investigated him for a while and with the approval of the Director of Public Prosecution Noordin Haji, it obtained a warrant from the High court to him appear and take plea.
Omari had attempted to block his prosecution by filing a case that sought to stall his intended prosecution, raising issues touching on infringement of his rights.
Omari further told the court that the officer has not been personally served with summons.
Judge Kanyi Kimondo deferred plea taking in the matter to January 26, 2023.
The judge also directed that the officer table in court a medical report proving that he was hospitalised.
In an amateur video that later circulated widely on social media platforms, Rashid was seen gunning down the two men in broad daylight, despite one of them raising his hands in surrender.
When his gun runs out of bullets, the video shows, the dreaded cop is seen requesting for another pistol from his colleague before resuming shooting, pumping more bullets into the body of one of the men.
When he was due to appear in court last December, a group of ethnic Somali traders in Eastleigh turned up in court to show solidarity with him.
Abdullahi Roba, a middle-aged man from the area shouted down a rival pro-prosecution group at the court precincts, dismissing them as foreign-funded outfits keen to perpetuate crime.
“Rashid is the antidote for crime in the area. Even if it is my son who is a thug, I’m happy to have him in jail or even executed,” Roba said, amid cheers from tens of mothers accompanying him.