The killing of Agnes Wanjiru allegedly by a British soldier in 2012 is once again back in the news.
The body of the 21-year-old sex-worker and mother of one was found dumped in a septic tank two months after she disappeared following a night out with a group of soldiers in Nanyuki, where the British army has a permanent garrison.
By then, the soldiers had already left the country and her family’s attempts to secure justice had been frustrated by both the Kenyan and British authorities.
However, reports in the British press indicating that a British soldier had confessed to killing Wanjiru and showed comrades where he dumped her body, and exposing social media posts where the soldiers were laughing at the murder, have galvanised a renewed investigation from the Kenyan police with promises of cooperation from the British.
While the fresh probe is welcome, it must be stressed that the prospects for justice are not as clear cut as one may presume. Kenya has a terrible record of delivering justice to foreigners who commit abuses against its own citizens.
For many, this case will bring to mind the similar case in August 1980, when 19-year-old Frank Sundstrom, a US Navy sailor, confessed to killing 29-year-old Monica Njeri, a mother of two daughters, whom he had paid $23 for sex while on shore leave in Mombasa.
Sundstrom pleaded guilty to manslaughter and released on a $70, two-year “good behaviour” bond and promptly returned to the US. Three years later, the US government would agree to an out-of-court settlement with Njeri’s family of nearly $17,000.
At the time of the killing, 17 years after independence, Kenya’s Judiciary was still dominated by the British. The case was prosecuted by Nicholas Harwood and heard by Justice LG Harris, both British, who conspired to reduce the charge from murder, which carried a mandatory death sentence, to manslaughter on the spurious basis that Sundstrom had confessed.
The case caused a firestorm in Parliament, where MPs believed the US had arm-twisted the Judiciary to liberate Sundstrom. In an eerie precursor of things to come, then Attorney-General James Karugu shocked legislators by declaring himself “legally impotent” to appeal the ruling.
The statement presaged that of Defence Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa, who this week told a parliamentary committee that Kenya essentially needed British permission to prosecute crimes committed by British soldiers on its own territory. “the defense cooperation agreement that gives us jurisdiction to deal with [the murder of Wanjiru]… has lapsed,” he said.
The Kenyan government’s callousness and recalcitrance in dealing with crimes against Kenyans is a reflection of its own commission of similar crimes against them and of its colonial roots.
The report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which looked into abuses committed against Kenyans between 1963 and 2008, concluded that the pre- and post-independence governments were guilty of gross human rights violations, few of which have been prosecuted.
The Uhuru Kenyatta government, which tampered with the report to remove mention of his father’s abuses and theft as Kenya’s first post-independence ruler and has subsequently done its best to bury it, has continued in the same vein as his predecessors.
In 2017, he commended the police for actions taken during that year’s general election, in which they killed dozens of opposition supporters and even stoned the motorcade of then opposition leader — now President’s ally — Raila Odinga.
The attempt to cover up the Wanjiru case by the Kenyan and British governments is also a potent reminder that no British settlers, officials, troops or police officers have ever been held to account for the brutal murder and torture of thousands, and the incarceration of up to 1.5 million people in concentration camps, during the seven-year state of emergency declared in 1952 at the height of the Mau Mau rebellion.
In fact, for more than half a century, the British government stole, destroyed and hid any documents that might, as reported by the Guardian, “‘embarrass [the British government] or other government’ or cause problems for any colonial policeman, civil servant or member of the armed forces”.
In an era when Germany is prosecuting a 100-year-old former concentration camp guard for assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners during World War II, it is unconscionable that the people who committed similarly terrible crimes in Kenya, Kenyans and British, continue to enjoy a comfortable retirement unbothered by worries over impending justice.
