Kenyan court sentences police officer to death for triple murder

Peter Muiruri in Nairobi
·2 min read

A police officer, Fredrick Leliman, who was among those convicted of killing Nairobi lawyer Willie Kimani, his client Josephat Mwenda and taxi driver Joseph Muiruri, has been sentenced to death by a Nairobi court.

In the judgment delivered on Friday, three other accused, Stephen Cheburet, Sylvia Wanjiku and Peter Ngugi, will serve 30, 24, and 20 years in prison, respectively.

In Kenya, death sentences are usually commuted to life in prison, according to a ruling by the country’s supreme court.

Kimani, Mwenda and Muiruri were abducted on 23 June 2016 after leaving law courts just outside the city where Mwenda had filed a case against Fredrick Leliman.

Their bodies were discovered a week later in a river more than 100km (60 miles) away from the point of abduction.

While concluding the five-year trial, Justice Jessie Lessit termed the crime as “a most foul murder, an execution that was most heinous” and which had a clear motive.

“The [murder] was to destroy evidence by destroying the complainant, which was not only drastic but draconian and extreme action to take,” said Lessit.

Related: ‘The wounds won’t heal’: Kenya’s agonising wait for justice on killings by police

The killings caused uproar in Kenya where cases of extrajudicial killings are rife, with some organisations reporting 127 cases of police killings and 25 enforced disappearances in 2022 alone.

Benson Shamala, country director of the International Justice Mission, where Kimani worked, told the BBC. “No one should experience what these three went through, especially from the same people mandated to protect them.”

The Police Reforms Working Group – Kenya welcomed the judgment in a statement posted on Twitter, saying it has closed a chapter on “one of the most heinous murders in our country”.

In July 2022, family members of the victims were elated by the guilty verdict, with Kimani’s wife, Hannah, calling it “a source of comfort to our hearts, even though it may not bring Kimani back”.

She added: “At least Kimani will not be included in the statistics of people who went through torture, went [through] abduction, and [were] killed without getting justice.”

After the sentencing on Friday, Mwenda’s widow fainted while addressing the press outside the court.

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