The threatening text was sent to the Minister on June 26/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya Jul 11 – A 25-year-old house-help has admitted before a Nairobi Court that she had sent death threats to Education Minister Mutula Kilonzo via text messages.
Irene Thuku told the court on Wednesday that she was instructed by her employer to send the minister the SMS.
According to Thuku her boss, whom she only identified as Boniface has links with the outlawed terror group Al Shabaab and that he was connected to the Assanands House explosion that killed one person and injured scores of others.
The threatening text was sent to the Minister on June 26.
The Court has now directed the State to produce a report of her social status – her family background, marital status, children etc – before sentencing that is scheduled for July 25.
Kilonzo had raised the issue in Parliament about two weeks ago.
The SMS message seen by Capital FM News states in part: “Minister Mutula Kilonzo be ready to die. We were send (sic) by our boss to come to ur place RUNDA this weekend and shot (shot) you to death.”
The message contains spelling errors and in some areas the authors use American slang.
“So Mutula be ready to die this coming wkd we will even expose ur whole house in runda,” read the chilling message.
The Education Minister claimed that the authors of the threatening messages claimed to be working under someone who carried out grenade attacks in Ngara, Moi Avenue and Mombasa.
The authors of the message go on to claim that “our boss works as a caretaker …on State House Road and that he is da one who send us to threten IMANYARA” “.. He has big connection na ALL-SHABAAB He is our BOSS. We Av done many explosion with him,” the SMS message reads.
Kilonzo joins a list of senior government officials who have in recent past claimed to have received threats.
Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara told Parliament in April of an incidence where he was accosted by four men while on his way home late at night.
Imanyara claimed the four men who came out of a stalled car along Crescent Road near State House ordered him to kneel down, face Mt. Kenya and profess his support for a leading presidential candidate failure to which they would chop off his head.
In December last year, the government tightened security around Defence Minister Yussuf Haji and Deputy Speaker Farah Maalim following credible information that they were targeted for assassination by Al Shabaab.