Kenya has been put on the international radar in the luckless search for the world’s most-wanted fugitive, Rwanda’s Felicien Kabuga.
Despite denial by both retired President Moi’s regime, and after 2002, President Kibaki’s administration, the suspicion among the investigators remains that he is hiding in Kenya.
Kabuga has a Bounty worth Ksh500 million (put up by the U.S. government) for anyone who can lead to his whereabouts.
Trackers report he entered Kenya on his way to Switzerland and his whereabouts went unknown indicating he was holed up in the country and has never been spotted leaving.
Where in Kenya could he be?
The question is, who could have, if at all he is in Kenya, given him sufficient cover from his trackers to last more than 20 years and still counting?
Kabuga, 76, is one of three high ranking fugitives from Rwanda who have evaded capture and are believed by the UN to be protected by networks embedded in ‘friendly’ countries.
In 2012 a Kenya Army soldier allegedly assigned to protect the wanted Rwandan genocide suspect is alleged to have disappeared — and may have been murdered — after he secretly took pictures of the fugitive, investigations revealed.
The soldier was part of a shadowy unit set up by people close to the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) and the military or who appear to have had access to facilities controlled by the two institutions.
The unit provided security for the runaway genocide suspect, who has a Sh500 million bounty on his head, while he was hiding in Kenya even as the government denied knowing his whereabouts.
In 1998 it was alleged that corrupt units within the Kenya Police might have tipped off the fugitive when a raid by the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) that included Interpol (International Police) detectives and an elite Kenyan police unit, narrowly missed capturing him in raid on his suspected safe house in Nairobi.
The disappearance of Michael Sarunei, an infantryman who was part of Kabuga’s bodyguard, has raised questions about the government’s handling of the hunt for the fugitive businessman, whom the United States Government has always insisted was being harboured by Kenya.
A relative of the soldier, who remains anonymous for his own safety, was interviewed by NTV reporter John-Allan Namu in Rift Valley, where he produced the pictures of a man later identified as Kabuga and video images of a white government Land Rover in which Sarunei was driven away by his captors.
Said the source: “Four years ago Michael (Sarunei) began earning a lot of money. I asked him whether soldiers were getting paid better these days. He told me that he was working for a very rich man from Rwanda, who the government had wanted to keep in hiding, and that’s why he was getting paid a lot. Michael told me that the rich man who he and others were protecting was called Kabuga.”
Sarunei had reportedly told his relative that his bosses had ordered him never to reveal anything about the man they were protecting or he would be killed.
But Sarunei never heeded this warning. According to the source, in late 2008, when Kabuga was still in a Nairobi hospital, the soldier secretly photographed him. Unknown to him, the pictures were discovered by a colleague who alerted Kabuga and his protectors in government.
According to the relative, on February 13, 2009, Sarunei was led out of his home one morning into a government vehicle, registration GK 029K, never to be seen again.