Kenyan agent 'tried to kill British detective'

The Kenyan government organised an assassination attempt in London against a senior Scotland Yard detective, according to evidence presented to a Kenyan parliamentary inquiry.

John Troon handed over police documents describing how a Kenyan agent was despatched to kill him in 1991. The alleged plot was easily foiled: airport police found the would-be assassin's gun and ammunition and promptly arrested him. The detective was, in any case, out of the country at the time.

According to Mr Troon, the would-be assassin was an aide of Nicholas Biwott, the most feared politician in the country at the time.

The inquiry is hearing evidence about the 1990 murder of Robert Ouko, the Kenyan foreign minister, one of the darkest moments in former president Daniel arap Moi's 24 years of autocratic and often brutal presidency.

Mr Troon initially investigated the murder of Dr Ouko and identified two of Mr Moi's closest aides as the main suspects. The retired detective has now, for the first time, directly implicated Mr Moi in the killing of Dr Ouko - a claim that raises the prospect that the former president could be prosecuted, despite an unofficial amnesty that has been in place since he left office in December 2002.

"I am satisfied with the evidence and information available to me that Moi was very much aware and involved in the murder of his foreign minister," Mr Troon told the inquiry.

Dr Ouko was one of Africa's most respected politicians and was a favourite of both Margaret Thatcher and former President George Bush, who wanted him to take over as president.

Riots erupted across Kenya when Dr Ouko's charred and bludgeoned body was found near his home in February 1990. Police initially claimed he had committed suicide. As the violence worsened, however, Mr Moi was forced to call in Scotland Yard.

Mr Troon named Mr Biwott and Hezekiah Oyugi, the intelligence chief, as the main suspects but the government refused to receive the report for nine years and then rejected its findings.

Speaking to the Telegraph yesterday, Mr Troon said Kenyan intelligence was capable of murdering people abroad. He disclosed that he had new evidence showing that Mr Moi's spies may have murdered Mr Oyugi in a London hospital in 1992. The former intelligence chief was flown to London apparently suffering from a motor neurone condition but his body was taken back to Kenya hours before a post mortem examination. "Oyugi may have been about to try to save his own skin by doing a deal to reveal the people involved in the murder," said Mr Troon.

A former Kenyan intelligence official said rumours had abounded within the security services that Mr Oyugi had been poisoned.

"Obviously, only a select few people knew what happened to him because he was the boss," the officer said. "But we were quite adept at poisoning. Don't forget we were trained by MI6 among others."

Mr Troon, who now heads internal investigations at a British bank, refused to give evidence in Kenya, saying he still feared for his life after the Foreign Office told him they had details of new murder plots. His testimony has been heard at the Kenyan High Commission in London.

Though there has been a change of government, much of Mr Moi's feared security apparatus remains intact. "I am getting more security conscious," said Mr Troon. "It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the threat could migrate here."

Mr Moi's party may be gone - trounced in elections two years ago - but the regime of his successor, President Mwai Kibaki, has proved just as corrupt.

Mr Biwott and Mr Moi have fallen out, however, and the former has become close to the new president. Keen to deflect a crisis of credibility both locally and internationally, speculation is mounting that the former president could face criminal charges.

Kenyans are riveted by the hearing, particularly the testimony of a Swiss businesswoman, Marianne Brinner.

She claims to have been a mistress of Mr Moi and many of his cabinet colleagues, which brought her many favours.

Among them was involvement in a huge molasses plant. She testified that Dr Ouko had a dossier detailing how Mr Moi's ministers had plundered profits from the business, which could have contributed to his death.

Last night, Mr Moi denied that Miss Brinner had been his mistress and promised to sue.

Another illustration that Kenya is turning into another Zimbabwe-style African basketcase: Kenya threatens to arrest British envoy for 'theft and corruption' Relations between Britain and Kenya plunged to their lowest point in decades yesterday after a senior minister in President Mwai Kibaki's government threatened to arrest the British high commissioner on charges of theft and corruption. In an outburst reminiscent of an angry tirade by Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, Kenya's lands minister, Amos Kimunya, claimed that Sir Edward Clay had used stolen government files to prepare a controversial dossier alleging corruption in the cabinet. Sir Edward has become the bane of Mr Kibaki's administration since he began a crusade against top-level corruption last year. This month he accused ministers of "massive looting" and said he had handed over details of 20 major scandals to the president. The government was quick to brand Sir Edward "an incorrigible liar" and "an enemy of the state" but was alarmed by the overwhelming support he received among Kenyans. In what amounted to the first tacit admission that Sir Edward's allegations were true, Mr Kimunya said senior civil servants leaked the details that formed the basis of the dossier. "The information was corruptly obtained," Mr Kimunya said. "He should be taken in." Mr Kimunya is seen as one of President Kibaki's closest allies. Both men are members of the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe. A cabal of Kikuyu ministers is accused of cashing in on a series of procurement tenders, costing Kenya up to £500 million half the government's annual budget since Mr Kibaki came to power two years ago. It is unlikely that the government would be rash enough to fulfil its threat and breach diplomatic immunity by arresting Sir Edward. But there are signs that Nairobi is prepared to ignore international condemnation and assume a policy of defiance similar to that practised by Mr Mugabe. In a worrying sign of a return to the repression that characterised Kenyan politics in former years, Mr Kimunya announced that all civil servants who leak information on corruption to foreign diplomats or the press would be charged with treason, a hanging offence. The move is seen as particularly targeting the former head of the anti-corruption unit, John Githongo, who resigned this month and fled the country. His departure prompted the United States, Britain and Germany to suspend aid. The British High Commission has ignored Mr Kimunya's threat but there is growing concern among the 30,000 British residents in Kenya that they could become victims. Kenyan ministers claim that the British Government is behind all corrupt deals in the country and there have been veiled threats against British business interests. There are fears that Mr Kibaki could seek to deflect anger among Kenyans by demanding the redistribution of white-owned farms, as has happened in Zimbabwe.

Many of the older generation, certainly. The younger lot have been fed such a diet of misinformation and propaganda so they have a very twisted understanding of what colonialism was.

This is being fed, in Kenya, by a liberal Harvard academic called Caroline Elkins who has written a book called "Britain's Gulag". In it she seeks to assert that Britian committed genocide against the country's Kikuyu tribe during the Mau Mau uprising and that it was a crime comparable with Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's Russia. An old family friend of ours, a kindly quaker famous for treating countless Africans for free, was described as the Dr. Menegele of Africa for allegedly cutting off the testicles of suspects and performing weird tests on them.

Needless to say pretty much everything she asserts in the book is unmitigated bollocks.

The liberal academic is really the scum of the earth. An educated person who has dedicated her life to academe should seek to uphold the truth, champion it and be prepared to die for it. To deliberately distort it, to falsify the past for unwitting future generations, to create bad blood between races when there was none is a crime, and a very serious one...

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