Stolen Kenyan baby returns home from South Sudan

A Kenyan baby stolen from its mother just four days after birth returned to the country Friday after a court ordered that he be brought back.

The boy who was in the company of Kenya Mission in South Sudan and Children’s Department officials remained playful, at one time grabbing a journalist’s microphone, but his parents are yet to be identified.

The baby looked healthy. He had been in the custody of the Kenyan Embassy for four months, before he was finally flown in.

His story begun on September 30 when a woman in her forties boarded a Simba Coach bus destined for Juba in from Nairobi.

The woman, who has since been jailed for child abduction, took on the bus indicating that she was the real mother of the infant.

But in a road journey that takes more than 20 hours, the cat was always going to get out of its bag.

The abductor passed through Kenya-Uganda border but got arrested after crossing into Uganda-South Sudan borders without notice.

CRYING BABY

The baby had been crying. The passengers got concerned that despite the yelling, the mother was neither feeding it nor cuddling it to calm down.

The following day at the Namule border point in South Sudan, the passengers notified the police who questioned the woman. Here is when she started speaking from two sides of her mouth.

“She initially said she was the mother, but later she changed saying she had only been given the baby to bring to South Sudan. Through the South Sudanese authorities, we arrested two other women, one woman from Kenya and another South Sudanese national,” Lawrence Chemonges, the Foreign Affairs Senior Assistant Secretary for Diaspora service told reporters at the airport.

The ministry had been notified of the incident in October, but relied on South Sudanese authorities to trace the woman’s movements. It appears her phone records helped.

“The passengers in the bus had suspected that the child is stolen because the baby had been crying all the way from Nairobi and she was not breastfeeding him,” a dispatch from the Kenyan Embassy in Juba describes how the Mission got wind of the information.

One Kenyan woman on the bus who had talked to her later called the Mission in Juba to report the incident.

According to the narrative, when they asked her why she was neither cuddling nor breastfeeding the baby, she told them she had only adopted it.

It is a curious incident given that normally, an adult travelling in the company of a minor across the borders must declare the identity of the child.

Foreign Affairs could not determine whether she had declared her details at the Kenyan border.

Border officials later demanded that her breasts be checked to determine if she had breastfed at all. It is from here that they updated their National Security agencies in Juba.

The Mission further updated Nairobi that the suspect, only identified as Hellen Syokau, had initially indicated that she was from Tanzania before her identification documents betrayed her.

“She informed the passengers that she was from Tanzania but upon producing her documents, they found out that she is from Kenya, Eastern Province and Kamba by Tribe.”

The baby now identified as Marua Munene alias Baby Lucky Juba, though his real name is yet to be known, was returned to Nairobi by Kenyan Foreign Affairs officials following a court order in Juba that the baby be brought back.

ABDUCTORS JAILED
According to the Embassy, the baby’s three would-be abductors have since been jailed with the Kenyan getting a year behind bars for abduction and trafficking.

Foreign Affairs declined to identify the other Kenyan woman and her south Sudanese accomplice saying further investigation was going on.

“We still don’t know the baby's parents because there was no identification or birth certificate on the woman. We managed to trace other suspects using the woman’s previous telephone calls and she later admitted to have stolen the baby in Kenya,” Mr John Mariera, the Secretary in the Kenyan Mission in Juba said.

Foreign Affairs could not name the children’s home the baby will be hosted, but have asked anyone who lost a baby of this age to report the matter to the police or contact the ministry urgently.