Prime Cabinet Secretary (CS) Musalia Mudavadi told the Senate on Wednesday that the government has no budget allocation to settle ‘blood money’ for Stephen Bertrand Munyakho, a Kenyan man facing execution in Saudi Arabia.
Munyakho,50, has spent 13 years in different Saudi prisons and was sentenced to death by the sword after being involved in a fight with a colleague in April 2011 and the other party succumbed to injuries.
The victim’s family has since demanded the costly ‘blood money’ or ‘diya’ – a financial compensation under Islamic law paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm, or involuntary property destruction.
Appearing before the legislative House, Mudavadi said that there is a pending relief since Munyakho’s execution was deferred but the compensation amount cannot be settled unless the victim’s family scales it down.
“The family has raised Ksh.10 million. There is no budgetary provision for the government to settle this kind of situation whether in Saudi or any other country,” he said.
“The government is trying to do what it can to see if this matter can be resolved differently and if the family who lost the individual can perhaps climb down from the high level of Ksh.150 million.”
On May 13, Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’oe said that Saudi Arabia agreed to postpone the impending execution of Munyakho which was due on May 15.
“I am deeply grateful to inform (sic) that authorities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have kindly granted our request to postpone the impending execution of Stephen Munyakho (now known as Abdulkareem), to allow for further negotiations between all parties,” the PS said on X.
Mudavadi further stated that 316 Kenyans have lost their lives in the Gulf states from 2002 to date. Of these 166 died in Saudi Arabia, 58 in Qatar, 51 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 25 in Iraq, Bahrain (10), and Kuwait (6).
The Prime CS added that 416,548 Kenyans are currently in the Gulf States among them 310,266 in Saudi Arabia, 66,025 in Qatar, 23,000 in UAE and 8,000 in Bahrain.
Other 5,392 are in Oman, 3,515 in Kuwait, 200 in Iran and 150 in Iraq.
“It should be noted that not all Kenyans register with our missions abroad despite being sensitized on the importance of such registrations hence sometimes it is difficult to have very precise data,” he told Senators.
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