HOW KAUNYA ESCAPED

Nyanza deputy PC Oku Kaunya was spirited out of the country in a movie-like operation in which at least two foreign missions were involved, the Sunday Nation has established. Mr Kaunya was escorted to the border in top-of-the-range four-wheel drive vehicles with diplomatic number plates for his crossover to Uganda from where he took a flight to Europe.

His onward travels have been kept secret by his handlers who believe that he may well turn out to be a key witness should the International Criminal Court try the perpetrators of Kenya’s post-election violence. The witness protection programme is a secretive operation, details of which are usually scanty.

Five days after Mr Kaunya’s departure from the country on April 11, a close confidante said he left after he had attempted to meet a senior government official without success. Last month, he went into hiding after receiving death threats. However, his wife Millicent Kaunya said her husband was out of the country with the government’s knowledge.

On April 14, Mrs Kaunya said her husband had been feeling unwell and had travelled to Germany for treatment. She said he would also visit his daughter in the United States and would be home in three weeks. Mr Kaunya is a former commandant of the Administration Police Training College in Embakasi which, according to the Waki report, was a central link in the chain of events leading to the post-election violence that claimed more than 1,000 lives and displaced 500,000 people.

The report said 1,600 officers were sent to the college for “special training” so they could act as election agents for PNU. “All officers deployed were dressed in plainclothes, easily identified as they were not from the local community and travelled in large groups by more than 30 chartered buses,” the report said.

“In addition, they received Sh21,000 each for their duties. The entire exercise was called off after some officers were killed and many more injured by citizens.”Mr Kaunya was last month reported to have gone into hiding, but he later resurfaced in Kakamega Town, saying he had gone to visit a friend in Vihiga.

The mysterious departure of the man who could be a key witness in the expected trial of the key perpetrators of post-election violence is one of the stealthy moves that ICC investigators in the country are making on the job. Investigators from the office of ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo arrived in the country more than two weeks ago, but little has been seen or heard of them.

The Sunday Nation has learnt from impeccable sources that the office of the ICC prosecutor is carefully conducting the investigations, keeping in mind that some of the men and women they seek are key government figures or influential businessmen. “They have an office in Uganda, and that’s where they are operating from,” said a diplomatic source who spoke to the Sunday Nation on condition that she would not be named.

The ICC operates an office in Uganda under the Outreach Division of the ICC. The court has been in Uganda at the invitation of the government investigating human rights abuses by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army and has an arrest warrant for LRA leader Joseph Kony and four of his lieutenants.

Mr Ocampo is expected in Kenya next month as investigations gather momentum. He is hoping to nail those who bear the greatest responsibility for the violence.

Under protection

As many as 20 witnesses whose testimony about crimes committed during the violence is considered crucial have been placed in protection. Many have been flown out of Kenya for their safety while others are being protected in safe houses in various parts of the country, the Sunday Nation has learnt.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, a State agency, is partially involved in the highly secretive witness protection programme, which is said to have generated considerable in-house heat over accusations that one of the commissioners has been leaking highly sensitive information on the investigations to suspects.