Mr Bryan Kassaine Spira, the best of friend of Mr Joseph Irungu ‘Jowie’ and TV anchor Jacque Maribe, has turned State witness, according to the Nation’s law enforcement sources.
On Monday, Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji gave consent for the prosecution of Mr Irungu and Ms Maribe for murder in the death of Ms Monica Kimani on the night of September 19.
It had been widely speculated that Ms Maribe would face the lesser charge of accessory to murder, but it appears investigators and prosecutors want to leave the job of determining the extent of culpability, if any, to the courts.
Even the lesser offence of accessory to murder is a serious crime whose punishment is life in prison, according to Section 222 of the Penal Code.
The acquisition of a high value witness may also have given investigators and prosecutors confidence in their murder case. Mr Kassaine is Ms Maribe’s neighbour and a close friend of the couple. It is likely that Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti will have used Mr Kassaine’s evidence to try and tie the two to the crime and what investigators have described as an attempted cover up.
The Daily Nation does not know at what point Mr Kassaine agreed to turn State witness, or what evidence, if any, he may have provided to detectives.
Ms Maribe and Mr Irungu will appear in court this morning to plead to the charges. They are innocent until pronounced otherwise by the courts.
In the opinion of prosecutors and investigators that the Nation spoke to in confidence, four factors will have weighed on the minds of investigators with regard to Ms Maribe’s fate; first, when she learnt of Ms Kimani’s death, based on the assumption that Ms Kimani was known to her; second, whether she came into contact with any evidence relating to a possible crime and a person she may reasonably have suspected to have committed the crime; third, how she behaved towards any evidence of the crime; and, finally, what steps she took to report her suspicions to the police.
Police have previously said that clothes which may have been worn by a suspect in the commission of the crime were burnt near Ms Maribe’s house.
Investigators and prosecutors will be hoping that Mr Kassaine will help the court to identify the person or persons involved in the burning of the clothes, which they have characterised as the destruction of evidence and concealment of a crime.
Police and prosecutors will likely also be relying on Mr Kassaine to give evidence about his gun, a Ceska, which was used in an alleged suicide attempt by Mr Irungu inside Ms Maribe’s Royal Park Estate house on Friday, September 21, at around 1am. Yesterday, Nation sources said ballistics experts had confirmed that the bullet which injured Mr Irungu came from Mr Kassaine’s gun.
At 7pm in the evening of the same day, Ms Maribe, Mr Irungu and Mr Kassaine reported to Lang’ata Police Station that Mr Irungu had been shot by thugs early in the day.
Ms Kimani, 28 and a South Sudan-based businesswoman, was killed in her Lamuria Gardens apartment, off Dennis Pritt Road in Nairobi. She had been tied up, her mouth taped shut and throat cut by what police have described as a “highly trained assassin”.
Mr Irungu, a bodyguard who has worked for private security companies in the Gulf and Afghanistan, was arrested on September 24. Yesterday, he was taken for psychiatric assessment to determine if he is fit to stand trial. He has been in custody at Muthaiga Police Station after a court sitting in Kiambu allowed the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to detain him.
The assessment was conducted by a private psychiatrist even as his family and lawyers complained that he had not been treated for the gunshot wound on his chest despite the court in Kiambu ordering the police to take him to hospital.
Kassaine — Jowie and Maribe’s friend — to testify against them in gripping murder case: It is likely that detectives have used his evidence to tie the two to the crime and its attempted cover up https://t.co/4ngyLTg58z
— Breaking News (@News_Kenya) October 9, 2018