Kenyan drug suspect deported from Madagascar arrives in Nairobi
A suspected Kenyan drug trafficker deported from Madagascar has arrived in Nairobi and is expected in court later Monday morning.
Ndechumia Bilali Kimali fled the country in 2015 when he was linked to the 7.6 Kilograms of Heroin seized in MV Baby Iris – the ship that was blown up by Kenyan authorities in the Indian Ocean.
The suspect appeared composed and could be heard telling police officers “I am a father six and I am a businessman… I don’t know why you are harassing me.”
But Kenya Airports Authority’s CID Chief Joseph Mugwanja said the suspect “is a dangerous drug trafficker” who will face charges to join five others in a case pending at the Mombasa Law Courts.
“Let it be known that criminals committing crime in Kenya and running to other countries will be pursued and brought back in the country to face law,” Mugwanja told reporters at the airport shortly after the suspect arrived aboard a Kenya Airways flight which landed at 5.40 am.
The suspect was accompanied by two police officers from Madagascar who handed him to the Kenyan authorities who searched his two bags as journalists clicked photos away. The bags had his clothes, documents and mobile phone SIM cards.
The ship carrying the drugs valued at Sh22.8 million was blown up in the high seas in a security operation led by Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery.
“Our law enforcement agencies are in constant collaboration with other agencies outside Kenya to make sure that criminals will not have safe haven in their quest to commit crime in our country or elsewhere,” he added.
Other suspects who have since been charged before court are Clement Serge Bristol from Seychelles who was the yacht’s pilot and Kenyans Ahmed Said Bakar, Mohamed Bakari Mohamed, Sharifu Mzee Mohamed and Ahmed Hussein Salim.
That was the second time the government destroyed vessels laden with narcotics.
In August 2014, President Uhuru Kenyatta witnessed yet another destruction of heroin worth Sh1 billion in a ship off the Coast of Mombasa.
The vessel was mounted with explosives which were detonated some 16 nautical miles south of the coastal town of Mombasa.
The drugs were extracted from the 1,800 litres of the ship’s diesel reservoir on July 15 where they were concealed when it was intercepted off the Kenya Coast in Lamu by Kenya navy officers.
On April 25, 2014, Australian Navy sailors patrolling the coast of Africa seized another haul weighing more than one tonne on a suspicious sailing boat.
The estimated the street value of that heroin haul was put at $290 million (over Sh20bn).
Crew from HMAS Darwin boarded the wooden boat east of Kenya and discovered 46 sacks of heroin hidden among bags of cement.
The Navy said the drugs from the dhow were taken aboard HMAS Darwin.
On January 31, Kenya extradited two sons of slain drug baron Ibrahim Akasha to the United States, where they were wanted for drug trafficking.
Baktash and Ibrahim Akasha were whisked onto a chartered plane alongside Vicky Goswami (Indian) and Hussein Gulam (Pakistani).
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations were involved in the operation that led to the arrest of the four at the weekend in Nyali, Mombasa.
Senior detectives from the US Drug Enforcement Agency and Kenya’s anti-narcotics agency were also involved in the operation.
They are accused of conspiring to ship at least 98 kilogrammes of high-grade heroin and methamphetamine to the US through Kenya.
