A Mombasa Court Friday slapped six Pakistanis and one Iranian national who trafficked Sh1.3bn heroin via sea in Mombasa in July 2014 with a life sentence in a historic ruling.
Mombasa chief magistrate Martha Mutuku also fined them a Sh3.9 billion fine each in addition to the sentence or in default serve a one-year sentence.
The court had in February found the foreigners seized aboard a ship guilty of trafficking 377.2 kgs of heroin, worth Sh1.3 billion, and 33,200 litres of heroin, worth Sh189 million.
The prosecution was led by Senior Assistant DPP Alexander Muteti, assisted by Senior Prosecution Counsel Peris Bosibori.
The six are Mohamed Saleh, Yakoob Ibrahim, Saleem Muhammad, Bhatti Abdulghafour, Baksh Moula, and Pak Abdolghaffer.
Three Kenyans, Khalid Agil Mohamed, Mohamed Osman Ahmed, and Maur Bwanamaka were acquitted because they were only hired to clear the ship after docking in Mombasa.
The court ruled that the evidence and exhibits provided placed the foreigners at the centre of the crime and found that the drugs were carefully concealed inside their ship which took detectives days to discover it.
Further, the court stated that the demolition of the MV Amin Darya was irrelevant to the trial because it occurred after adequate documentation of the crime scene, drug seizure, and testing.
Collecting and preserving the evidence was done according to the law.
The ship, known as Al Noor, was sunk in a zone known as Delta-16, which is designated for the disposal of explosives within Kenya's territorial waters, blowing it up at 4.08 pm.
Smoke billowed from the explosion, which died within a minute.
The area of the detonation is about 10 miles from the nearest point of land.
There has been a surge in the volume of heroin trafficked through east Africa in recent years, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The drug is typically transported from Pakistan and Iran to east Africa, known for its porous borders and weak maritime surveillance, and onwards to Europe.
In April an Australian warship seized more than a tonne of heroin worth $268 million from a dhow in Kenyan waters.
