Nairobi August 17th, 2018: Could it have come at worse time for Kenya’s Tourism and Wildlife Ministry? With Kenya still stinging from the humiliation and embarrassment over the translocation related deaths of 11 rhino’s, a Kenyan court ruled this past Friday afternoon (August 3rd), that convicted ivory trafficker Feisal Mohamed Ali was to be set free. Lady Justice Dora Chepkwony ruled that he should be acquitted for a number of reasons, ranging from constitutional concerns to original trial irregularities.
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| Feisal Mohamed Ali |
The conservation world, as well as the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), were not surprisingly, apoplectic with rage. Since Kenya had convicted Feisal in July 2016, his prosecution had been put on a pedestal to show the world that ‘king pins’ could be put in jail. Lady Justice Chepkwony pulled the carpet out from under that pedestal and no doubt there are many either doubting her integrity or the integrity of the judicial process.
To all who follow elephant conservation and the world of international wildlife trafficking, the name Feisal Mohamed Ali is all too familiar. Identified as the kingpin of an ivory trafficking cartel, he fled Mombasa on June 5th, 2014, after 2152 kilograms of ivory were seized by police at a local warehouse. An arrest warrant was issued and two days before Christmas 2014, he was arrested with Interpol assistance in Tanzania. Nineteen months later, Feisal Mohamed Ali was convicted of being in possession of that ivory and sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined 20 million shillings.
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| June 5, 2014: 2152 kg of ivory laid out at Makupa police station – {File Kevin Odit Nation Media} |
For the few close observers of the trial, the sentence handed down by Senior Principal Magistrate Diane Mochache was viewed with some puzzlement. For all the evidence presented before the three different judges over the trial period, the weakest case, a case of solely circumstantial evidence, was against Feisal. Co-accused Abdul Salim Omar Sadiq, who was arrested at Fuji Motors on the night of the “seizure”, who assisted Feisal with logistics, and had 56 phone contacts (texts and calls) with Feisal in the space of 4 hours, was found not guilty.
Furthermore, the three co-accused directors of Fuji Motors Ltd, where the 2 tons of ivory had been apparently stored for a number of days, were also found not guilty.
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| Abdul Halim Sadiq Omar and the 3 directors of Fuji Motors; Ghalib Sadiq Kara, Praverz Noor Mohamed, Abdul Majeed Ibrahim |
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| Charge Sheet |
From Police Extortion to Celebrated Seizure
Chief Inspector Peter Mbua was the lead officer in this ivory “seizure” and one of the prosecution’s main witnesses. At the time, he was the Officer Commanding Makupa Station within the city of Mombasa. According to testimony, on the evening of June 4th, 2015, he received information from a confidential informant that there was a quantity of ivory within the gated compound of a business known as Fuji Motors East Africa Limited. At approximately 10:00pm, he led a small team to that location to conduct a search.
Unfortunately, the facts clearly suggest that he was not there to carry out his lawful duties as a police officer but instead, was acting in the capacity of a common criminal utilizing his position of authority to extort money from those who were trafficking the ivory. In simple terms, his goal was to depart the Fuji Motors compound with a lot of money and to leave the ivory with its ‘owners’.
CI Mbua, of course, has never admitted as such but his actions on that night, his subsequent obtuse and deceitful testimony, and the blatant way in which he obstructed the investigation, would lead an ordinary person of sound mind and judgement to no other credible conclusion.
Due to a change in magistrates, CI Mbua testified on three separate occasions during the trial process. And every time he was hammered by the six different defence advocates over his honesty and integrity as to what really transpired on the night of the “seizure”. At one point during the trial, while under cross examination by defence counsel Moses Kurgat, over the countless ways he had violated police investigative protocols, he stated to the court: “this was not an investigation, it was a recovery”. It was probably the most truthful statement he made during his testimony. CI Mbua did go to Fuji Motors to make a recovery but not for ivory.
It is almost impossible to ascertain exactly what happened on the night of the seizure due to significant contradictions amongst the testifying police officers. However, using CI Mbua’s testimony as a baseline, he and a small team of officers attended at one of the two gates of Fuji Motors Ltd at approximately 10:00pm. He did not set up a secure perimeter. He had no crime scene officers with him. He did not have any transport on standby considering he believed he was about to come across 2-3 tons of ivory. He claimed that he negotiated with a night watchman for 2 hours before gaining entry into the compound. (Has anyone ever heard of a police officer negotiating an entry to execute a legal search?) CI Mbua did not record or recall the night watchman’s name (he is still anonymous and missing) and he failed to arrest two men found on the premises. At 01:30am, he enlisted the help of the general public to carry the ivory from where it was located in a storage building onto the waiting Administration Police lorry that had been called in. No exhibit log was completed or photos taken of the ivory on site. One is left to wonder how much ivory went missing between the Fuji Motors compound and Makupa police station.
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| Chief Inspector Mbua testifying January 2016 |
At some point, the “shake down” attempt morphed into an official police “seizure”. According to phone call data later examined by the police, the longest conversation by Feisal that night was with Police Constable Tom Juma (4 minutes 41 seconds duration). Tom Juma was a Mombasa CID officer who was part of the Mbua team that night. Juma testified that the conversation had to do with key access to where the contraband ivory was stored.
Considering that the police had, at that point, been on site for over five hours, this was clearly a lie. But in under circumstances that can only be described as perverse, the defence could not challenge his truthfulness without implicating their client and the prosecution could not challenge for fear of implicating the state in criminal wrong doing.
That call took place at 05:17am and so it would be fair to conclude that at about this time negotiations between Chief Inspector Mbua, Tom Juma et al, and Feisal’s organization broke down, the police were stuck with a load of ivory they did not want and now this “rip off” had to be turned into a glowing example of police investigational prowess.
Phone Data Analysis
Mobile phone data analysis was utilized and given considerable weight as part of the evidence against Feisal and his co-accused’s during the trial. Police analyst’s presented to the court a chart that graphically displayed 15 numbers of significance and the number of phone contacts that had been made between Feisal and the subject numbers. Not surprisingly, the chart indicated not only a high volume between Feisal and co-accused Abdul Salim Sadiq Omar but also corroborated evidence of prosecution witnesses relating to a vehicle rented by Feisal days prior to the “seizure”. The phone data analysis also revealed, however, that the Feisal investigation was focused on him alone to the exclusion of other obvious suspects.
One of the numbers on the chart was that of a subscriber initially identified in a media article published in the Daily Nation on June 6th, 2014 and relating to the Feisal seizure (“Bosses Protecting Ivory Smugglers, Claims Officer”). An unidentified police officer told reporters that “the real owners of the ivory were a Mombasa businessman and a politician who unsuccessfully contested the Mvita parliamentary seat in the last year’s (2013) election”.
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| Portion of Call log data |
Call data analysis indicated that a person using a phone subscribed to the above politician had nine contacts with Feisal on the morning immediately following the “seizure” between 9:25am and 6:25pm. Certainly of note, Feisal’s first outgoing call after he fled to Nairobi later that day was to the said subscriber.
To put this number of contacts between Feisal and said subscriber in perspective, before the night of the “”seizure””, there had only been nine previous contacts between the two, going back to May 23rd. This was never a subject of testimony or inquiry during the trial.
One mobile number not on the chart belonged to the only subscriber who called both Feisal and co-accused Sadiq Omar on the night of the ‘”seizure”’. We shall call this subscriber ‘H’.
Between 11:00pm on the night of the “seizure” and 5:00pm the following day, there were 29 phone contacts between ‘H’, Feisal, and Omar Sadiq. One of these calls was the first outgoing call made by Feisal after his conversation with PC Tom Juma, a conversation that was almost certainly a negotiation for the police release of the ivory. The identify of ‘H’ was never brought up during the trial by either prosecution or defence.
Tampered Evidence
One of the more publicized events during the trial process involved the disappearance of nine vehicles from the compound of Fuji Motors Ltd after the “seizure”. The ODPP had directed on June 10th, 2014, that police were to ensure that no vehicles or any other property was to leave the compound until the completion of the investigation. In other words, it was designated a crime scene and required 24/7 security. A letter documenting this order was sent from the Divisional Criminal Investigation Officer (DCIO) to CI Mbua who complied and assigned five officers to this task.
Six months later in December, it was discovered that nine vehicles were missing from this supposedly police-secured compound. This evidence tampering was addressed by Magistrate Mochache in court on December 28th, 2015 when she ordered that ODPP conduct an inquiry, separate and apart from the trial, into the circumstances surrounding the interference with the crime scene. (This inquiry was never conducted.) CI Mbua was in fact partially culpable for the disappearance and admitted to the court that he had released the officers from the assignment 3-4 weeks after the initial deployment over either a) manpower concerns or b) concerns from the property owner who was uncomfortable with the police presence on the property, depending on what version of his testimony one chooses to believe.
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| Senior Principal Magistrate Davis Karani – suspended mid-trial for “work related issues” |
It turned out that there was a second court order in place relating to Fuji Motors Ltd from another court relating to unpaid rent. Mbua also used this as an excuse to withdraw his officers without any documentation and without advising anyone else except for Corporal Jackson Guyo, the case investigating officer who was considerably his junior.
Circumstantial Evidence
The evidence against Feisal was anything but iron clad. Besides the apparently frenetic and numerous phone calls/sms’s made by him on the fateful night, the prosecution submitted that Feisal, in the company of his right hand man, Sadiq Omar, borrowed a truck from a Mombasa broker, and then, based on a gate pass register and cash payment receipt, parked and paid for a similar truck’s stay (the registration plate was different) at Fuji Motors for a number of days immediately preceding the “seizure”.
There was no forensic evidence that ivory had ever been in the rented vehicle and no specific evidence on how the 2152 kilograms of ivory found its way into the storage room at Fuji Motors. In fact, when CI Mbua and his team gained entry into the compound, it was apparently Sadiq Omar who indicated control over the storage facility where the ivory was found.
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| Lead Prosecutor Alex Muteti |
Both Feisal and Sadiq Omar both testified in their defence and there were significant
contradictions between both. The ODPP, in its written submission to the court and relating to their testimony stated: “inconsistency on their part renders their defences worthless, unreliable, unbelievable and untenable.” Should this argument not also be applied to police testimony?
Criminal Police Conduct
While much has been made of ‘tampered evidence’, the back and forth over Feisal’s bail request and to a lesser extent Magistrate Karani’s mid-trial suspension, what has never come under scrutiny was the police investigation. The conduct of the police that night and throughout
the prosecution was not only totally devoid of any integrity but, in fact, orchestrated solely to protect themselves from being criminally implicated.
Indeed, there is certainly evidence to suggest that the police and perhaps even the prosecution did not expect the trial to come to a natural conclusion. The first prosecution witness testified on January 20th, 2015. The police request made to Police Constable David Kiboi for his phone data analysis was made in August 2015. He did not actually receive the data to analyze for another 3 months.
The hand writing analyst, Superintendant John Muinde, testified that he did not receive the police request to analyze Feisal’s hand writing on the gate register/receipt until July 27th, 2015. This means that the prime evidence on which Feisal’s conviction was based, was not requested until eight months after the trial had commenced.
So Who has the Last Word?
Following Feisal’s conviction, Feisal’s counsel stated that the “trial court erred in law and fact and that it convicted him (Feisal) on the basis of mere suspicion.” He also stated that Feisal had been made a “sacrificial lamb so as to appease the public”. Considering the substantial national and international media attention that this trial had received and the political climate at the time, this possibility cannot be ignored.
Three months prior to the Feisal conviction, in an event that had again put them in the global spotlight, Kenya burned 105 tonnes of seized ivory. President Kenyatta proclaimed then that “poachers and their enablers will not have the last word in Kenya”. This was during a time when Kenya’s First Lady was the patron of the very successful “Hands Off Our Elephants” campaign plus Kenya was positioning itself to take a lead role in the upcoming CITES meetings in South Africa. Clearly some national embarrassment would have been suffered with a Feisal acquittal. Is it really not beyond the realm of possibility that someone could have whispered in the ear of the presiding magistrate that a guilty verdict would be in Kenya’s best interests?
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| Feisal advocate Gikandi Ngibuini |
While the factual guilt of Feisal Mohamed Ali is essentially not an issue, his legal guilt is. Should an accused be convicted on the evidence of corrupted agents of the state? This ivory “seizure” by officers of the National Police Service was not of lawful purpose but for criminal gain and all subsequent actions by them were for the sole intention of trying to extricate themselves from criminal liability. Counsel for all accused knew it and so surely did the ODPP.
Four months after the Feisal seizure, Chief Inspector Mbua was transferred from Mombasa to a place one would have difficulty finding on most maps. The transfer of one rogue officer can surely not equate to justice.
Despite all the outrage from the well intended but not so well informed, Lady Justice Dora Chepkwony’s ruling was an attempt to right a judicial wrong and sent a message that the end does not justify the means. She recognized the clear failings in the initial trial and made the only decision that could be made.
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| Magistrate Diana Mochache delivery verdict July 22, 2016 |
And as far as Kenya’s perceived reputation for having the ability to investigate, prosecute and convict ivory traffickers? Smashed to smithereens and rightly so. Contrary to widely held belief, it is the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) of the National Police Service that
investigates ivory and rhino horn seizures of significance, not the Kenya Wildlife Service.
The DCI has the lead in five ongoing prosecutions before Kenyan courts relating to ivory seizures of significance, one dating back to 2011. The present prognosis on all cases is somewhere between ‘critical’ to ‘on life support’.
Kenya is still looking for its first conviction of a major player involved in illegal wildlife trafficking. Don’t hold your breath.
https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/the-appeal-acquittal-of-feisal-mohamed-ali-a-victory-for-rule-of-law-a-process-corrupted-or-both-commentary/
POST SCRIPT: Since the appeal acquittal, there have been no indications that the ODPP did actually appeal this decision. In the past year, there have been two more acquittals in Mombasa courts in major trafficking prosecutions.
