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Kinoti says Sgt Kenei was murdered in cold blood

NAIROBI, Kenya Mar 5 – Investigators have concluded that Sergeant Kipyegon Kenei, the Administration Police officer who was on duty at DP Willam Ruto’s office when former CS Rashid Echesa and two foreigners visited, was murdered.

“Forensic investigators have established that he was murdered,” said George Kinoti, the Director of Criminal Investigations, when he addressed a press conference Thursday and even released CCTV footage showing events of the day at Annex.

“This murder was planned and they made it appear like suicide,” he said of Seargeant Kenei whose body was found lying on the floor, just near the door, with a gunshot wound on his chin on February 18. He lived in a Servant Quarters house in Imara Daima.

Kinoti spoke Thursday when he played out CCTV footage from Ruto’s Annex office on the day, confirming that Echesa and two foreign arms dealers were there for 1 hour, 22 minutes and 23 seconds.

Echesa had taken two arms dealers to Ruto’s office, as he raced to seal a Sh39 billion fake military equipment tender deal in which he was paid a facilitation fee of Sh11.5 million.

CCTV footage released on Thursday shows Echesa arriving in a Range Rover accompanied by two people who went into Ruto’s office where they were ushered to the executive boardroom by Sergeant Kenei.

“We are investigating murder, not suicide,” Kinoti said, but did not immediately reveal the link between the murder and the arms deal.

Echesa is out on bond after denying charges of obtaining Sh11.5 million by false pretense from the arms dealers.

Kinoti and forensic experts who spoke to journalists said they are now piecing together evidence, before making arrests and eventual prosecutions.

Soon after Kenei’s body was found, DP Ruto’s office issued a statement saying Echesa only spent 23 minutes at Annex in what has now been disputed by investigators.

No arrest has been made on the murder probe.

But the scene of crime, a place he called home for 6 months at Imara Daima’s Villa Franca estate, depicted an outright case of suicide.

There was a Jericho pistol, a bullet mark in the ceiling and a cartridge as well as a note currently undergoing examination to establish whether he wrote it.

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“While the scene painted a picture of murder, the emerging evidence indicate otherwise,” a senior detective privy with the ongoing investigations indicated on Tuesday.

Acquired evidence, detectives said, indicate that the murder “was premeditated.”

His phone which had gone missing was found with all data cleared.

“It was a new phone. No contacts or anything to show he ever used it,” the detective said. “Why would he want to clear all the data if it is true he committed suicide?”

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