Carjackers committed the boldest of robberies in Nairobi last week when a police inspector from Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta’s security staff had the car he was driving taken at gunpoint.
Four armed men confronted Chief Inspector David Machui, who was driving a police BMW 7 Series, and forced him into the back seat before eventually abandoning him six hours later. The State House vehicle was eventually found in Kampala in neighbouring Uganda after a joint operation involving Kenyan and Ugandan police officers.
Four Kenyans and a Ugandan were been charged in connection with the theft. The suspects are from Nairobi, Nakuru, north-west of the capital, and Bungoma, a town on the border with Uganda. One suspect, a mechanic who has been released after agreeing to become a prosecution witness, allegedly made illegal alterations to the car; but Cliff Ombetta, representing the mechanic, told reporters: “The people who took the vehicle to his garage are people he knows well because they are people he had been dealing with, so when they went with that BMW to his garage, there is no way he could know that it was a stolen vehicle. This is an innocent man.”
Flying Squad boss Munga Nyale has since said that they have unearthed a syndicate that led to the carjacking.
