As the Kenya Forum has suggested, someone, or some people out there, really do not want you know about the truth behind Dr Robert Ouko’s murder. Here, we think, is more evidence to back up that claim.

As Kenya Forum readers will know, we have often found reason to question the whys behind how the Robert Ouko murder affair has been handled in the media. Now, we have new questions, specifically relating to how journalists have presented the TJRC findings.

In short, the TJRC’s report concluded, what has been known to many for years, that Dr Ouko had not met with President Bush during the ‘Washington trip’ of late January, early February 1990, and so the theory that such a meeting could have caused a row with President Moi leading to Ouko’s assassination, just did not add up.

Here is the exact phrasing:

On the Ouko murder ‘Washington trip’ theory as The Nation reported it:

Daily Nation, front page, today, Friday, May 24: ‘Dr Ouko was killed not long after a US trip in which he had an audience with President Bush’.

On the Ouko murder, how the TJRC described it:

TJRC report, Volume II A, paragraph 131: ‘In addition, the Washington Trip theory revolves around a private meeting with President Bush and Ouko that never actually occurred’.

Citizen TV’s revelations, the TJRC and Robert Ouko’s murder

Well, that could have just been lazy journalism by the Daily Nation but now look at this.

On Sunday’s ‘Face Off’ section of Citizen TV’s ‘Sunday Live’ programme, lawyer Jennifer Shamalla was face-to-face with David Makali, the Director of the Media Institute in Nairobi.

They discussed the pros and cons of the TJRC’s report. Shamalla raised the Ouko findings and pointed out, among other things, that the so-called company BAK, supposedly run by Marianne Briner-Mattern (British detective Troon’s and Gor Sunguh’s ‘Star witness’) and Domenico Airaghi (out on bail convicted of fraud and demanding money with menaces) the couple that were the source of the other theory behind Ouko’s murder, the Kisumu Molasses project theory, was in fact a fake.

In this Jennifer Shamalla was right although she got an important date wrong by one day. Briner-Mattern and Airgahi’s ‘company’ BAK, which promoted itself to the Kenyan government as experts in molasses and a company with a good trading record, had no record of doing any business at all and was only finally incorporated as commercial enterprise on February 13, 1990 – THE DAY THAT DR ROBERT OUKO WAS MURDERED. What a coincidence!

After that date, BAK’s claim (for which read Briner-Mattern’s claim) for compensation from the Kenyan government rose overnight from $150,000 to $5.975 million.

Did Citizen TV kill the Robert Ouko murder story?

Few have ever pointed these interesting facts out and fewer still have reported it, or been allowed to report it.

Now add to the list of the latter Citizen TV’s fearless ‘Face Off’ team. The programme aired on Sunday. It was available on Youtube until Tuesday morning when inexplicably, Citizen TV ‘removed’ the piece from the web.

Now why would Citizen TV do that? Did someone give them a call? If so, who and why?

So please, Daily Nation and Citizen TV, could you please explain whether we have a free, truthful media in Kenya or not? Certainly the Kenyan public interest requires it to be so.

For access to all the facts as they relate to the saga that is Robert Ouko’s murder, read our article ‘Murder of Robert Ouko: what really happened’