Nairobi – Kenya’s president on Wednesday sacked the country’s top prisons boss over an embarrassing jailbreak by three “terror” inmates this week.
Wycliffe Ogallo was also arrested along with the head of Kamiti Maximum Security Prison and his deputy, said George Kinoti, the head of criminal investigations.
President Uhuru Kenyatta had just replaced Ogallo as commissioner-general of the Kenya Prisons Service over Monday’s escape from the heavily guarded facility by three men charged with terror offences.
Ogallo’s lawyer said his client was arrested without any reason given and later released.
Kenya has launched a nationwide manhunt for the inmates at large, including one who was serving 41 years for involvement in one of the country’s deadliest terror attacks.
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The country has also boosted security in towns and border areas after twin suicide bombings in neighbouring Uganda on Tuesday that have been claimed by the Islamic State group.
Interior Minister Fred Matiangi earlier this week blamed “recklessness” and “irresponsibility” for the escape and said seven wardens at Kamiti had been arrested.
A reward of 60 million Kenyan shillings ($535 000) has been offered to anyone with information that might lead to the capture of the escapees.
Of the three, Mohamed Ali Abikar was found guilty in 2019 of being a member of al-Shabaab and abetting the Somali jihadist group in the slaughter of 148 people at Garissa University in eastern Kenya in April 2015.
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The victims, mostly students, were rounded up at dawn by gunmen and shot point-blank.
It was the second bloodiest terror attack in Kenya’s history, surpassed only by al-Qaeda’s bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998 that killed 213 people.
The other two inmates were identified as Joseph Juma Odhiambo, who was arrested in 2019 for trying to enlist in Al-Shabaab, and Musharaf Abdalla Akhulunga who was detained in 2012 over a foiled attack on Kenya’s parliament.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Getty Images
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