A British soldier formerly stationed in Nanyuki has claimed that he married a Kenyan woman and attended the wedding ceremony without knowing and blamed the language barrier for the misunderstanding.
The soldier (name withheld) was posted to Nanyuki and developed a relationship with a Kenyan woman and in 2022, he expressed interest in travelling back to the UK with the said woman as his wife.
While filing his paperwork, the relationship first caught the attention of British authorities who found him culpable of bigamy, the offence of marrying a person already married to another person.
According to British Law, bigamy is considered an offense punishable by imprisonment.
Prosecutors handling the matter argued that the soldier had committed bigamy by participating in an Islamic marriage ceremony before finalising a divorce from his first wife, with whom they tied the knot in 2011.
The couple had been separated but was yet to finalise the divorce process when his new relationship came to light.
The prosecutors told the Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire that the original couple, whose divorce proceedings were initiated in 2017, had a child together.
"He then proceeded to marry a second individual on October 29, 2021, whilst married to his first wife. In doing so he committed bigamy," Prosecutor Flight Lieutenant Charlotte Adams told the court according to the Daily Mirror, a British newspaper.
"On October 29, 2021, a Sharia Law marriage ceremony called a nikah took place - this was a legal, recognised marriage ceremony. The marriage ceremony was a valid Kenyan marriage ceremony and in doing so he committed bigamy whilst his first wife was still alive and not divorced," she added.
In his defense, the sergeant revealed that he was not aware of the events of the ceremony because it was conducted in Swahili, a language he did not understand.
The Kenyan woman was pregnant by the time the divorce papers were being filed in 2022.
In the UK, couples can only marry if they are single, widowed, or divorced and are above the age of 18 years.
