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Kenya

Drug cartels report due in two weeks

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 1 – Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere says they will release a report on investigations into drug trafficking in Kenya in the next two weeks.

Mr Iteere announced on Wednesday that he had commissioned a team of highly qualified detectives to undertake the probe.

"What I can tell from the intelligence sources, we have names of personalities, some of them are very prominent and within a week or two, I am going to produce the results," Mr Iteere said at a media conference where he also released statistics of drug seizures and arrests in the past two years.

He said the investigation headed by one of his deputies will be expedited as ordered by President Mwai Kibaki who has also called for the restructuring of the Anti-Narcotics Unit (ANU).

"You are aware that the President did direct that we do as a matter of urgency restructure and revamp ANU. Yes I do concur, and very shortly we will be restructuring ANU, this is a unit within the CID," he added.

He said the investigations being carried out by the police were totally independent from what the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission [KACC] is doing after it received a damning dossier from the US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger.

"I have not received those names from the KACC, but we are investigating what we have got from our intelligence sources," he said.

Mr Ranneberger last week visited the KACC offices and handed a report containing names of alleged drug barons to the commission\’s director PLO Lumumba. It is believed some of the barons are prominent personalities banned from travelling to the US.

There has been heightened pressure from Members of Parliament demanding that the government names the drug barons who have been accused of benefiting from proceeds of the illicit trade.

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The MPs and a section of civil society organisations have on several occasions accused the government of failing to expedite investigations into drug trafficking cartels.

Imenti Central Member of Parliament Gitobu Imanyara last week tabled a report in Parliament accusing the police of having frustrated investigations on drug cartels in the country.

In his report, Mr Imanyara also claimed that Godana Jarsa was sacked from the police force after he tried to pursue a drug-related investigation.

The report also claimed that another police officer, the late Erastus Chemorei, was killed because he held keys to a store at the GSU training school in Embakasi where a large consignment of cocaine was stored.

The police commissioner has dismissed the reports and maintains that Mr Jarsa was sacked by the Public Service Commission after he deserted duty and maintained that the late Chemorei had never held keys to any cocaine store.

"This information is therefore false.  I want to state at no time were the drugs stored at the GSU Training School Embakasi where the late Chemorei was the adjutant before his demise.  The drugs were only taken to GSU Training  School for display and verification following media reports at the time that the actual drugs had been sold by police and what was in store was just chalk. This information is therefore false," Mr Iteere said.
 

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