Ex-Air Force chief’s 31-year battle for his honour stolen in 1982 coup bid

PHOTO | FILE Mr Kariuki after he was rehabilitated by the Narc Government, which appointed him chairman of the Postal Corporation of Kenya during a national function.

What you need to know:

  • Today, his battle to restore his rank and the benefits and reputation that goes with it is still not in sight
  • His appeal against an award of Sh7 million that was slated for next week has been pushed back to December 18

Peter Kariuki rose to become an Air Force commander yet crash-landed in ignominy, becoming the highest ranking military officer to be jailed for the 1982 coup attempt that tried to overthrow Moi and to be stripped of his precious title.

As he stares down the relentless approach of the 70th year of his life, the second indigenous man to command the Kenya Air Force is a picture of mellowness and dignified stoicism. Mellowness has come inexorably with age, but stoicism he has cultivated the hard way.

Enduring the seemingly unbearable, he has spent the last 31 years trying to get back his rank of Major General which he lost shortly after the 1982 putsch that attempted to overthrow the Government of President Daniel arap Moi.

A General of the air force, like that of the army or the navy, has power and prestige. And only a tiny elite make it that far. It is harder still in a meritocracy where only the best get ahead. In a corrupted system, other factors such as ethnicity and nepotism carry the day. At independence, Kenya was a meritocracy.

And so this is the brief story of former Major General Kariuki who as a boy in 1953 looked up the sky and saw a flight of British bombers hunting down Mau Mau fighters in the jungles of Central Kenya and at once told his mother that he would one day “drive” an aeroplane. He did and graduated as a Pilot Officer in KAF’s Flying Training School Course Number 3 in 1965 and rose to command the Air Force.

That was then. Today, his battle to restore his rank and the benefits and reputation that goes with it is still not in sight. So powerful are the headwinds.

His appeal against an award of Sh7 million, which the High Court in Nairobi thought sufficient compensation “considering all the violations of (his) constitutional rights”, that was slated for next week has been pushed back to December 18.

Through his lawyers, he describes the award as being “inordinately low upon the findings of the violations of the Constitution that amounted to a miscarriage of justice.”

Gitobu Imanyara and Company, his advocates, calculate the salary and benefits that he would have earned as Commander at Sh22,965,460/- based on armed forces salary scales. They want it for him. For the 1,982 days he spent in solitary confinement and based on his rank of Major General and Air Force Commander, they want the Court of Appeal to award him Sh495,500,000/-.

They calculate an award of Sh200,000,000/- as commensurate for all the other violations of his rights as found by the High Court. And absolutely essential, they want “restoration of his rank, benefits, honours and decorations.”

Kariuki was the Air Force Commander in 1982 when enlisted men in the service launched their putsch. He was at first a member of the military high command that was managing the aftermath of the cataclysmic events at Operations Room in Defence Headquarters.

And then from the blue, President Moi, the Commander-in-Chief sacked him and ordered his arrest. A disbelieving Kariuki was hauled before a court martial which, on January 18, 1983, found him guilty “of failing to prevent a mutiny” and “failing to suppress a mutiny.” It sentenced him to four years imprisonment on each count, both to run concurrently.

He was, in addition, dismissed from the armed forces and lost his rank of Major General and all benefits, medals and decorations of his 19-year career in the Kenya Air Force. He effectively became a non-person.

Kariuki served every last day of the four years after receiving a letter on January 6, 1983 that informed him that “the Commissioner of Prisons considered that it was in the interest of the reformation and rehabilitation of the prisoner that he be deprived of remission under Section 46(1) of the Prisons Act.”

KANGAROO COURT

Transcripts of the court martial that convicted him and which the Saturday Nation has read through fit the description of a kangaroo court that was doing an ill-disguised hatchet job. Mr F.E. Aragon, the Judge Advocate, who should have conducted himself with utmost neutrality, performed the role of a prosecutor.

The problem, essentially, was simple. On July 14, 1982, as Air Force Commander, Kariuki was called by his base commander at Laikipia Air Base, Col Felix Njuguna who informed him that one Lt Leslie Mwambura had reported that Sgt Joseph Ogidi had approached him and disclosed that he and others planned to overthrow Moi’s government. Ogidi wanted to recruit Mwambura.

On receiving Njuguna’s information, Kariuki at once telephone Lt-Gen John Sawe, then the Army Commander and Deputy Chief of the General Staff. He described the matter as very serious. Kariuki requested Sawe to arrange a meeting for him with Gen Jackson Mulinge, then the CGS. Sawe did and both proceeded to inform Mulinge of the intended coup.

Thereafter, Mulinge gave his guidance. The matter was to be passed on to Military Intelligence and the Special Branch “under the coordination and direction of the Chief of General Staff himself.” That is what was done.

On the afternoon of Friday, July 30, President Moi was opening the Nyeri ASK Show when the Director of the Special Branch, Mr James Kanyotu, requested him for permission to arrest the coup plotters, who were known in his intelligence circles.

Moi demurred and looked at his CGS. Mulinge advised him to wait until Monday to which Moi agreed. But Monday didn’t come; in the small hours of Sunday, soldiers burst out of their barracks, seized the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and announced his overthrow.

They were later crashed by loyalist forces led by Army Deputy Commander Mahmoud Mohammed who would soon be promoted to Air Force Commander replacing Kariuki.

Through his lawyer Paul Muite, Kariuki fervently requested the court martial to call Gen Mulinge as a witness. He wanted to prove that he had done everything that he was expected to do in his position – that is, promptly inform his superiors about a major problem. The court martial flatly refused.

WOULD BE EMBARRASSED

Court transcripts show Judge Advocate Aragon telling Muite that Gen Mulinge would be embarrassed if he was called as a witness. He menacingly tells Muite: “You realise one thing; it is the CGS who ordered this court martial to take place.”

“Naturally, Sir,” Muite says respectfully.

Aragon repeatedly tells Muite that calling Mulinge is immaterial until Muite, with respect and exasperation, tells the court:

“I would like to make my submission clear, Sir. First of all, Sir, I cannot go beyond the court, but I do wish to have it on record that the sole judge as to whether a potential defence witness is material or not material is the accused. The accused should not be called upon to justify to the court whether a witness is or is not material. The accused considers that what was said at this meeting with the CGS and the Deputy CGS is material to the conduct of his defence.”

Aragon (angrily): But why?

At one point during the proceedings, Attorney General Mathew Guy Muli appears before the court and pronounces that under no circumstances would General Mulinge be called to testify. Then he storms out of the court room. Kariuki was thus deprived of the most important person who could corroborate his story. And when he went to the High Court, Justice Daniel Musinga upheld his contention that this constituted a miscarriage of justice.

The 1982 putsch – one that could easily have been prevented – produced many victims and Kariuki remains its most enduring scapegoat, or fall guy. Somebody had to get blamed.

But the man who established Laikipia Air Base, the fighter wing of the Air Force, isn’t ever going to give up. To his last breathe, he vows to fight and overturn “an insufferable injustice” and to restore his rank of Major General and every last honour and benefit that goes with it.

“Saying I lost 19 years of my life would not really be correct as I lost so much more than that,” he told me. “Nineteen years of my career, which is terrible enough but losing four years of your life at an age where a man establishes himself and builds his future is horrific.

“All I had worked so hard for was taken away from me. My family had to let go of assets I had created as an additional cushion to fall back on during my retirement. These included rental houses and a farm. All my benefits were taken away from me and I was literally left with nothing. Furthermore I had been branded by the political system as the evil General who was at fault for what had happened in 1982. My name was not to be spoken of in the armed forces and yet everyone who knew all the details within the military knew very well that I was made the scape-goat and had been victimised.”

Then we talk about compensation. Evenly, without visible emotion, with calmness that is the hallmark of his dignity, he says: “Talking of compensation is a very difficult subject as I really don’t know how I can be compensated for what I have lost, leave alone for what was done to me during the imprisonment. I was judged and sentenced in a trial that was based on wildly fabricated charges. I was physically abused and violated, mentally tortured beyond anything that can be described by words. How can anyone or anything compensate me for that? Who can take away the nightmares that 32 years later still visit me in my sleep? No one and nothing can undo this suffering.”