Alexander Chepkonga (left), and Dickson Munene in Nairobi Court
yesterday where they were charged with the murder of Dr James Ng'ang'a
Muiruri in Westlands. PHOTO | FILE | NATION
The muezzin’s distant call to prayer trailed
by the tinkling sound of a bunch of keys and stamping of boots as the
prison warders approach the cell signal that it is time to wake up.
In
lusher climes and times, Dickson Munene would be stirred from sleep by
chirping birds and the revving engines of early risers. But being an
inmate at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, his luxury and liberty are
abbreviated.
At Kamiti, anybody who
ignores the gentler wake-up sounds would be tempting fate by turning a
deaf ear to the booming bark of the duty officer, ordering the inmates
to squat in groups of five: “Kaba tano tano!” It is a roll call routine
repeated multiple times a day.
By the
time the warders arrive, Munene and his cellmates – whose number
fluctuates between eight and 12 – will have folded their pieces of
well-worn mattresses nicknamed kirago and pushed the bucket “toilet” to
the farthest corner.
As a death row
inmate in a country whose hangman has not had to execute a job for
decades, the strands of Munene’s life have become a spaghetti bowl, too
convoluted to correctly predict the end.
FATEFUL DAY
Until
the wee hours of January 24, 2009, Munene was a dashing, young police
inspector — who occasionally chimed in with Nairobi’s vibrant social
scene. On the fateful day, he was in the nerve centre of night life in
the city’s Westlands suburb, which some like to call the “electric
avenue” for the high density of clubs.
But
a violent dawn shooting of a man who had just completed his doctorate
studies in the United Kingdom led to his arrest alongside Alexander
Chepkonga Francis, and their subsequent charging with murder.
Criminal
Case Number 11 of 2009 facing the duo, which ended in March this year
after going through the High Court and the Court of Appeal, was a magnet
of publicity. Journalists mined the best adjectives and
photojournalists angled for the perfect shot to feed the public’s
curiosity.
Munene was a young police
inspector, who had been accused of shooting dead a man on flimsy grounds
at a time when “rogue cops” were coming in for a lot of flak.
Chepkonga, who was early this year acquitted by the courts, was a
youthful and photogenic wealthy businessman who always seemed at ease in
court.
The victim, UK-based Dr James Ng’ang’a Muiruri, 30, was the son of former Gatundu North MP Patrick Muiruri.
And
now, almost six years after the incident, Munene has written an account
of the event that changed his life from behind the walls of Kamiti
Prison.
The book, which he hopes to
publish next year and is tentatively titled Justice to the End, touches
on his early life, his career, his version of the dawn shooting and the
criminal justice system in Kenya.
“This
book is not a way of self-preservation or trying to prove my innocence
as many prisoners in my situation would tend to do, but is geared to
critically analyse the current Kenyan criminal judicial system using my
case as an example,” he writes.
But
as the story progresses, he strays to the margins and attempts to prove
his “innocence”. In an obvious salvo aimed at the justice system, he is
sceptical that a “Messiah” would appear any time soon to put things
right.
“In our national anthem the
word, ‘justice be our shield and defender’ is so loud. Justice for
whom? Justice for everyone, especially the poor because the rich will
buy it anyway. On the contrary, it is now clear that the courts are
still in the path of only serving the haves, the mighty and influential
in our society,” he writes.
FLEETING DREAM
As
Munene’s story develops from his cell in Kamiti — where he says that as
a former policeman his life is constantly threatened by “dangerous”
criminals he once arrested and helped convict — he is transposed to his
childhood in the dirt-poor surroundings of Kangema, Murang’a
county.
As the second-last born
in a family of eight, he recalls never having enough of life’s basic
needs. His mother’s bank account, he writes, would be “shocked” once a
year when the coffee bonus was paid.
But
the fleeting dream of receiving a huge sum of money would quickly be
replaced by the reality that the deductions to service loans taken to
pay school fees and buy farm inputs had gobbled all that was deposited.
Sometimes,
in obvious desperation, like the day she needed to buy medicine for
Munene, the author recalls his mother begging “an important bank
official” and the cashier to allow her to withdraw a little money. On
such occasions, it did not matter that this would feed into the cycle of
the borrowing burden.
“I really
admired the confidence with which the cashier approached my mother and
the perceived power he had in determining whether we got medicine or
not,” he writes.
The admiration
turned into ambition. At that very moment, Munene wanted to be a cashier
— flicking wads of crisp notes with his nimble fingers and reading the
catalogue of the emotions on customers’ faces.
But
Munene knew that no matter how deftly he threw the dice of ambition,
the odds were against achieving his dream career. His sister Nyambura,
he writes, was next in line for secondary education and there was no way
their mother could afford to have them both in secondary school.
However, things took an interesting turn when Nyambura unexpectedly let her brother jump the queue.
“Her
reasoning was that since I was good in class I stood a better chance of
pursuing education and in return save my family from poverty,” he says
of the selfless decision that he says still fills him with guilt as he
believes he denied Nyambura the chance to go to school.
But
this was a launch pad he exploited well, fulfilling the perception of
academic success by joining the University of Nairobi to study
economics.
Munene says that upon
graduation in 2002 he would have been content with the lure of forever
remaining his own boss in a shop that dealt with computers, which he ran
with his brother Gerald, until a violent incident on Moi Avenue one
night jolted him to seek an unexpected path.
“I
was mugged as I entered a matatu to Eastlands. Those guys really worked
on me hard and they stole everything I had including my shoes. To my
astonishment they did not run away but continued to reign terror on
other commuters without fear of the law,” he writes.
DEDICATION TO DUTY
The
bitterness and helplessness he felt as he watched the thieves “happily
sharing the loot [and] even trying to put on my shoes”, inspired the
desire to do something about the “bad guys”. He decided to become a
policeman.
“Many people were taken aback by my resolve as they thought I was wasting the potential I had in doing business,” he writes.
He
successfully attended recruitment for a position, went through a
rigorous course at Kiganjo Training College and upon graduation in 2003
was posted to Karatina Police Station in Nyeri.
He had expected to be stunted in the same rank, but his career got off to a good start.
“The
officer in-charge (of the station) even without knowing my education
background realised that I was well informed, disciplined and
hardworking and he suggested that I be posted to crimes office,” he
writes.
His name was submitted to the
Commissioner of Police a few months later as one among the diligent
junior officers to be considered for promotion.
To
his surprise, the author writes, he was picked for a special
inspectorate course, which was the key to earning the rank of inspector.
Such a meteoric rise in a much discredited police force could either be
attributed to knowing the right people in the right places, working
incredibly hard or having the luck of the devil.
It was too good to be true for Munene but he believes his competence and academic credentials worked for him.
Upon
completing the course in November 2004, he swapped the sight of the
majestic Mt Kenya for the imposing buildings of Nairobi’s concrete
jungle after being transferred to Kilimani Police Division.
“The
pace at which I comprehended police work, my efficiency and commitment
to duty earned me many friends and admirers but also few critics who did
not like my young age,” he writes in obvious self-praise.
Things
got better when he was promoted to be in charge of Capital Hill police
post. Munene writes that his principle was that he was always available
for duty round the clock and he would respond to crime fast — preferably
within 10 minutes of receiving a report.
“During
my career as a cop, I came to discover an important aspect of solving
security issues, which was quick response. Responding to a matter
immediately it is reported, creates a high chance of solving the crime,
preventing it from happening or arresting the offender,” he writes.
It
is this dedication to duty, Munene believes, that would rewrite the
fairy tale script of his police career and lead him to languish in
Kamiti with some of the hardest of Kenya’s hardcore criminals as his
mates.
No wonder January 24, 2009
remains “a very vivid day in my mind”. Munene writes that he was on
night patrol almost all night, making various stopovers — including
passing by his friend Alexander Chepkonga’s flat where he met a few
other people — before calling it a day at 4 a.m.
“As
I drove along Valley Road, Denis — someone I had met in Alex’s house —
called and told me that he had a friend who needed my help. I went to
refuel my car at a petrol station along Koinange Street where the said
Denis was,” he writes.
The problem
was that the person in distress was in Westlands, which was supposed to
be covered by Parklands Police Station. Nonetheless, Munene says he
decided to help after talking to the officer in charge of Parklands, who
was supposedly not available to go to the scene.
The
crime that had led to the distress call was a vehicle break-in, “a
common occurrence within that area especially over the weekends”, writes
Munene. The victim was a man he only identifies as Edward, and the car
from where valuables had been stolen was curiously a government vehicle
with a civilian number plate.
Munene
would later learn that Edward was the son of a Cabinet minister in the
Mwai Kibaki administration. He notes with a tinge of irony that the
minister would a few days later be among those who condemned him as a
“rogue policeman” without knowing that Munene would supposedly not have
got into trouble had he not gone to Westlands “to save the son’s
life”.
After “resolving the issue”
of the break-in, writes Munene, he accompanied the group of friends to
the nearby Crooked Q club. It was almost 6 a.m. and Munene says he opted
for a “power nap” in the car outside the club — until he was woken up
by a scuffle.
“I saw Alex (Chepkonga)
lying on the ground with a person who looked like a bouncer hitting him
with kicks and blows,” he claims.
Other bouncers looked on, and seemed reluctant to intervene.
“I
came out of my car and approached the bouncers asking one of them why
he was allowing his fellow bouncer to attack a patron,” Munene claims.
The
man who “looked like a bouncer”, the author alleges, later got into a
car parked nearby and speed off and Munene decided to give chase since
“I felt a sense of duty to pursue the offender and arrest him”.
THE SHOOTING
The
alleged attacker was not a bouncer. He was Dr Muiruri, a UK-based
scholar and former Gatundu North MP Patrick Muiruri’s son. And a few
minutes later he was dead — shot by Munene and opening one of the most
high-profile murder cases in Kenya in recent years.
Munene’s
version of events is that he caught up with the victim’s car at a
junction near Sarit Centre and blocked it. He alighted from his car and
removed his handcuffs. By that time, Muiruri had got out of the car.
Munene introduced himself as a police officer, but soon a struggle
between the two began and this was complicated by a mystery woman who
had walked from the car.
“She started
pulling my hands that were holding the handcuffs. The struggle became
very violent and they overpowered me and I almost fell down,” he claims.
By this time, Munene’s pistol was slipping from the belt that secured it, and the policeman decided to remove it.
“Here
the unthinkable happened. The suspect grabbed my firearm by the muzzle…
It is during the struggle that the two shots got fired sporadically
hence the events leading to the case,” he writes.
It
is part of an account that judges at the High Court and the Court of
Appeal have heard, but nonetheless condemned the former police inspector
to face the hangman’s noose. The family of the victim was also not
convinced that Chepkonga, Munene’s co-accused, should have been
acquitted on appeal.
Alexander Chepkonga (left) and former police
Inspector Dickson Munene in a Nairobi court on October 12, 2011. They
were sentenced to death for murdering Dr James Muiruri in 2009. PHOTO |
PAUL WAWERU
“My
son was everything to me. I visited his grave last month and remembered
his blood on the road where he was killed. It is painful that the
person who gave the instruction for his killing is set free,” the
victim’s mother told the Daily Nation in March, this year.
But
what — according to Munene’s narrative which he claims provides fresh
insights into the case — were the circumstances that led to the fatal
shooting?
Why does the former police
inspector refer to the case as “politicised” with the media purportedly
helping to “conduct the trial where there is no defence or appeal for
the accused person”?
Why does Munene believe the judges should have reached a different verdict?
Does he stand a chance in the Supreme Court?
Find out in the second part to be published next week
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