OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Friday 8.00pm.
A FORMER senior official in the Kenya Wildlife Service was on Friday charged in the Nairobi High Court with the murder of British tourist Julie Ward 10 years ago.
A lower court last month ruled that Simon ole Makallah had a case to answer and recommended that he be tried in the high court. Makallah, KWS’s former deputy director, pleaded not guilty to the charge before judge Onyango Otieno.
Makallah was the chief game warden at the famous Masai Mara game park in southern Kenya, where Julie Ward’s mutilated and charred remains were found on a smouldering fire on September 13, 1988, a week after she was reported missing. The Kenyan police first concluded that Julie had committed suicide or been eaten by wild animals.
Two game wardens were tried for the murder in 1992 but acquitted, with the judge criticising the police investigations and saying many questions remained to be answered.
Julie’s father, John Ward, testified at the trial and said that he believed the Kenyan government tried to cover up the murder to protect the tourist industry. Ward, a wealthy Sussex hotelier, has spent millions of dollars in a dogged effort to unravel the mystery that surrounded his daughter’s murder. Julie was 28 at the time of her death.