Here is Jicho Pevu as aired by KTN
Fresh details have revealed a series of costly police blunders and missed leads that, either by design or default, have complicated investigations into the murder of Jacob Juma. Two weeks after the businessman was buried, a KTN investigation team managed to track down witnesses and get hold of crucial leads that suggest that he was killed elsewhere and his body dumped at the scene where it was discovered.
At the centre of the new revelations are crucial witness accounts, including that of a woman seen in Juma’s car hours before he died, a taxi driver who picked her up from Sarit Centre in Westlands and a guard at a construction site along Ngong Road, a few metres from where Juma’s car and body were discovered.
Although the woman claims to have been dropped by Juma at Trattoria restaurant on the night he died, camera evidence of this moment is non-existent, putting a dent on a crucial lead that could have helped police trace the businessman’s last moments. It is not clear why the seven cameras around Trattoria restaurant did not capture Juma dropping her off in his Mercedes (reg. no. KAL 007W), yet the same cameras capture the woman in the businessman’s car along Waiyaki Way.
“Not all cameras are working in town for various reasons,” CID Director Ndegwa Muhoro told KTN, responding to a question on why CCTV cameras were not working on the day Juma was killed.
The morning after Juma’s body was discovered, the woman expressed fear for her life telling the taxi driver who had picked her the previous day that she too could be “finished”. “He (Juma) had told me that his vehicle is bullet proof… are you sure he has been killed?” asks the woman in the telephone conversation exclusively obtained by the KTN Lead and Jicho Pevu programmes.
“I’m lucky I might have been killed with him,” she said before the taxi driver asks her to co-operate with investigators. “Just tell them what you know. I believe they will also ask me questions as I was among the last people to be seen with him,” says the taxi driver, who it is clear from the conversation knew Juma well. When he insists on being told what time the woman was dropped at Trattoria, she responds: “Why are you confirming when I left him in town? Are you also an investigator?”
The businessman was killed on May 5 in what police initially said was the work of the gunmen on motorbikes, who waylaid him, forced his car off the road, crushed the car windows and pumped bullets into his body. His killing however sparked a series of condemnation from among others Opposition leaders, who claimed the businessman was killed by State agents working at the behest of powerful individuals.
They claimed he was assassinated due to his knowledge of the Eurobond affair in which billions of shillings are claimed to have been stolen. Apart from Juma’s killers, the two witnesses were among the last people to meet him on the day he died. Events thereafter remain hazy and contradictory. According to the police, the first witnesses on the scene reported the incident to an administration police officer at the nearby China Road and Bridge Construction Company.
