Police impounded a consignment of 1000 sophisticated assault rifles imported to the country by a local arms dealer.
The Belgian rifles worth Ksh300 million have been detained at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) for non-compliance.
The police have not established who was the owner of the guns. This comes as the government issued an order for all guns to be returned to the state by CS Matiang’i.
The number of guns just sound scary to any ordinary citizen.
The consignment FN Scar rifles were confiscated on arrival from Belgium following revelations that the dealer’s license was among the 21-gun dealership and shooting range licenses that had been suspended by the Firearms licensing Board (FLB).
The board, which was disbanded on Friday, suspended the licences over the increase in the number of licensed dealers and shooting ranges in the country over the last seven years.
The FN SCAR (Special Operation Forces Combat Assault Rifle) is a 2009 manufactured semi-automatic rifle described as very effective and lethal in combat.
It costs about Ksh310,000 and is used by elite units such as US Navy SEALs and US Marines.
Kenya Defence Force (KDF) commando unit, the Special Forces (SF) is the only African elite unit armed with the rifles.
The importer of the rifles, Sailesh Mistry of CatEyes Ltd declined to comment on the matter citing it would jeopardise his business with the government.
“We dealers have been suspended until we are cleared. That is that. There is nothing big about it. You will put me in the limelight and the authorities might come for me and I don’t want anything like that to happen,” he told the Standard.
It is not known for whom the gun dealer was importing the sophisticated weapons.
Do you think the government ordered the guns?