A Journalist was Saturday arrested amid a confrontation between a senior police officer and agitated friends and relatives of the late businessman Jacob Juma at the Lee Funeral Home in Nairobi.
The Sunday Nation reporter was apprehended for apparently recording a heated conversation that had ensued at the mortuary after the late businessman’s family members demanded Mr Martin Nyuguto, an officer from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI), to explain why police suspiciously responded to the assassination incident.
The agitated relatives, who had gone to witness Mr Juma's autopsy, were questioning why detectives took so long to secure the Mercedes Benz car the late businessman was driving when he was shot dead.
Pressed hard to explain the disputed move by the police, Mr Nyuguto admitted that the vehicle was secured at 7pm on Friday, almost 21 hours after the murder.
As the altercation heated up, the Nation Media Group reporter was spotted recording the happening and it was then that the DCI officer pounced on him, trying to confiscate his equipment.
The apprehension of the reporter prompted the late Juma’s friends and family members present to intervene and have the Journalist released.
The police superintendent in charge of the Homicide Unit at the DCI, however, still threatened to take undisclosed action against the journalist, the Sunday Nation reports.
Meanwhile, the late businessman’s family has cast doubt in how police handled the cold-blood murder of their kin, pointing out among other things why the detectives did not find a single cartridge from the scene.
“Even the car, my friend, the media has been all over it. If they’re taking photographs right inside, where is it sealed? You never sealed it. You tell us that you’re going to get spent cartridges from the inside. Really?” asked an angry relative.
They also questioned Mr Nyuguto on why it took police long to open investigations into the killing.
The Juma family also querried why the vehicle was towed with the body inside before forensic investigations were done, noting that the standard procedure would be for the scene of crime officers to take all the evidence before anything is moved or tampered with.
Michael Juma, the deceased’s brother, querried why police at the Karen station failed to contact Mr Juma’s family as soon as they learnt of the killing saying, “there was no effort by anybody to give the family that distress call”.
Bumula MP Boniface Otsiula disputed the manner police handled the happening saying: “How could police leave the vehicle unsecured for over 24 hours? It means it has already been tampered with. How could they leave the vehicle unsecured?”
The controversial businessman was shot dead Thursday night in an incident that DCI boss Ndegwa Muhoro affirmed was an assassination.
“We can’t tell as yet what it is all about. But if nothing was stolen, that is an indication it was a hit. Whether they were hired (hit men) or not it fits description of a hit on the face value,” he said.
The incident has remained a heated subject on both social and mainstream media, with calls mounting for the Government to unravel the mystery around the killing of the city businessman.
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