Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has fired a senior prosecutor involved in dropping murder charges against a prominent British aristocrat accused of killing a Maasai game warden, officials said on Thursday.
Philip Murgor, the Director of Public Prosecutions, was sacked amid growing rage over the government’s handling of the high-profile case, threats of violence from the Maasai community and rumours the white rancher may flee.
”Murgor had to go because he acted unprofessionally when handling the case,” a senior government official said after the prosecutor’s firing was announced in a brief statement from Kibaki’s office late on Wednesday.
It was Murgor who stood before a judge in the central Rift Valley last week and announced that the government was dropping the murder charge against Thomas Cholmondeley, son of the fifth Baron Delamere, who was then released from jail.
His appearance in the court sparked a huge row between the attorney general’s office and police, who insisted that the charge was correct and supported by evidence gathered about the April 19 shooting death of the warden.
Rights groups and civic activists have vehemently protested Cholmondeley’s release, accusing the government of showing racial bias and favouritism in the matter, and Maasai warriors have threatened to attack the Delamere farm unless the rancher is rearrested.
In an apparent bid to quell the tribal fury, Kibaki replaced Murgor with British-trained lawyer Keriako Tobiko, a Maasai tribesman, who is expected to review the decision to release Cholmondeley as a public inquest begins into the killing.
Cholmondeley, the great-grandson of one of Kenya’s earliest and most prominent British settlers, admits to shooting to death Kenya Wildlife Service warden Samson Ole Sasina, a Maasai, but insists he acted in self-defence, thinking the plain-clothed officer was a thief.
The shooting and subsequent events have ripped open festering colonial-era resentments, underscored widespread sentiments of racial bias and highlighted the security fears of Europeans in what was once known as ”Happy Valley”. — Sapa-AFP