Let them kill me than this political intimidation–Ruto » Capital News

By DAVIS AYEGA,

RONGAI, Kenya Mar 7 – “Enough is enough,” Deputy President William Ruto has declared following what he termed continued political intimidation to block his 2022 Presidential bid.

“I want to tell those who are driving this agenda, they rather kill me but I will not be intimidated or slow down,” Ruto said Saturday in Solai where he attended the funeral of Sergeant Kipyegn Kenei, an Administration Police officer who worked in his Harambee House Annex office.

Kenei was murdered just before he could record a statement with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) detectives investigating a Sh39 billion fake arms deal orchestrated by former Sports Cabinet Secretary Rashid Echesa.

It is Kenei who ushered Echesa, a military imposter and two foreign arms dealers to Ruto’s office last month, to seal the deal in which the former CS received Sh11.5 million.

“If they Killed Kenei so that they can intimidate me then I want to tell them that I am ready but keep in mind that his blood will not rest,” Ruto said, sensationally claiming that “I am aware of what has been planned for me but I am ready.”

He mourned Kenei as a disciplined officer and assured his family of justice, and compensation through the police insurance.

Detailing his side of the story to the family and mourners who had gathered to pay their last tributes to Kenei, DP Ruto said he last met Kenei on February 17 when he summoned him alongside other security staff to brief him of the Echesa incident.

Ruto told mourners that he was concerned that the dubious military tender had painted his office in bad light hence the need for him to seek answers.

“Kenei and his two other colleagues briefed me on what happened and they even availed to me the CCTV footage on the events that the fake military deal was signed in my office,” he said.

It was
during the brief interrogation by DP Ruto that Kenei told him that he knew Echesa
and that he had received a call later that day from an individual DP Ruto did
not disclose informing him of the non-existent appointment of the former CS and
his accomplices in his office.

Upon listening to the submissions, DP Ruto said he advised Kenei and his two colleagues to record their statements at the DCI headquarters.

On February 20, DP Ruto said he called for another meeting with his security staff to find out the progress of the case only to be told that Keni was missing and that he had not availed himself at the DCI headquarters.

It was then that DP Ruto initiated frantic efforts to find out about his whereabouts and told mourners that he even made a phone call to Water Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui, who is related to Kenei but those efforts bore no fruits.

Ruto said he did not understand why the focus on the AP’s murder had shifted to his office.

“There can never be a relationship between my office and the procurement of guns,” Ruto said, insisting the investigation had taken a political angle.

When DCI Director George Kinoti addressed a press conference on Thursday with the update of the murder probe, he was categorical that Kenei was killer.

“Kenei’s murder has everything to do with the arms scandal,” Kinoti told reporters.

But Ruto is not convinced with this.

“Please DCI my friend do the work of the police, investigate and find out the truth. Please stop with the politicisation of the issue and politics,” Ruto said, “The scheme that has been driven to undermine my office has been intentionally been done so for political reasons.”

And he claimed that “The DCI is being used to undermine my office and bring me down and many of them are not even ashamed to say that I will not be there in 2022 and yet they are walking around”.

Kinoti denies the allegations.

A postmortem on Kenei’s body showed that he died of a singe bullet fired in his chin.

After the killing, Kinoti said, Kenei’s body was taken to his house in Imara Daima, where it was found, with a pistol next to it, in an apparent stage-managed suicide scene.

“We have evidence to show that he did not commit suicide,” Kinoti told a news conference on Thursday, “this is case of murder. They killed him and stage-managed the scene.” His body had a bullet wound on the chin.

While no names of suspects have been made public, Kinoti said “we have no doubt that it is linked to the arms scandal.”

In CCTV footage released by the DCI, Kenei is seen welcoming Echesa, the trio arms dealers and a fake military general–all in the deal.

Kinoti said detectives have concluded that Kenei must have been killed for what he knew about the deal, “because the stakes appear to have been so high if he exposed them.”

Echesa and two others are already facing charges of obtaining money in false pretense and are put on bond.

Kenei was killed as he prepared to record a statement at the DCI Headquarters where he had been summoned.

While the DCI accuses the DP’s office of failing to report his disappearance, a Chief of Staff at Annex Ken Osinde produced a letter showing that they had filed the report.

“The family is happy with the investigations into the murder and the progress so far especially the plan to open his cellphone and track the conversations,” his father John Chesang said told journalists in Nakuru.