A Kenyan court has sentenced a hotel resort worker to death after convicting him of being in a gang which in 2011 shot dead the British tourist David Tebbutt and kidnapped his wife Judith, who was then held for six months in Somalia.
Ali Babitu Kololo, 27, was found guilty of robbery with violence.
Kololo had been dismissed from his job several months before he guided the kidnappers to the Tebbutts’ villa at the remote resort on an island in Kenya’s Lamu archipelago.
The Tebbutts, from Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, traveled to the resort, close to the Somalia border, after visiting the Masai Mara game reserve.
In an interview with the BBC last week, Judith Tebbutt, 58, said she felt uncomfortable after arriving at the beach resort for a two-week stay as she and her publisher husband were the only guests.
She said was awoken by the sounds of her husband struggling with someone in the dark. Then she was jabbed with the barrel of a rifle and dragged down to the beach.
She added that she was unaware that the gang had killed her husband for the first two weeks of her kidnapping.
Tebbutt’s family reportedly paid a ransom, after which she was released. Her memoir of the event, ‘A Long Walk Home’, was published last month.
Neil Wigan, the UK ambassador to Somalia, wrote on Twitter: “Welcome conviction in Lamu today of Kololo for his role in Tebbutt kidnap and murder.”
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) confirmed the death penalty had been imposed, but said it was not expected to be carried out because of a moratorium in place since 1987.
Kololo is expected to serve a prison sentence instead.
An FCO spokesman said: “We welcome efforts by the Kenyan authorities to bring those responsible for the kidnap of Judith Tebbutt and the murder of her husband, David, to justice.
“Today’s news that Ali Babitu Kololo has been found guilty of robbery with violence is a positive development, but the wider Kenya investigations continue.”
