Jubilee brigade’s handling of Joho ‘arrest’ lacked intelligence

The drama last Friday in Mombasa over the reported arrest of Governor Hassan Ali Joho and his allies was a dramatic escalation of the tiff between the outspoken county boss and President Uhuru Kenyatta.

It served Mr Joho and his allies well to play up the issue as proof of government harassment of opposition leaders daring enough to cross the President and constantly defy his Mombasa proconsul, the old-style Coast Regional Coordinator Nelson Marwa.

Local police chiefs denied reports that Mr Joho and his allies had been arrested, insisting that they had “stormed” the Mombasa police headquarters to demand the release of businessman Ibrahim Kharti, who had been arrested earlier in the day.

But the damage had been done, and Kenyans were presented with the picture of a dictatorial and intolerant regime that will misuse security forces to intimidate political foes.

It started with Mr Joho mocking President Kenyatta after the ceremonial commissioning of a “non-motorised transport project”, also known as a footbridge.

What followed was the withdrawal of the governor’s police security detail alongside the officers attached to his Kilifi counterpart, Mr Amason Kingi.

Then came the “arrest” fiasco, and an even more interesting episode that might easily have passed under the radar.

As the matter was making waves, an obscure website, Intelligence Briefs, published on its intelligencebriefs.com space a racy account of how Kenyan police had arrested a notorious mobster facing an international arrest warrant.

The article reported that the said gangster was wanted for financing Al-Shabaab terrorist group, its Jaysh Aman affiliate and also the local separatist group, Mombasa Republican Council (MRC).

He was also running an international narcotics trafficking syndicate and was closely associated with notorious Mombasa drug smugglers, the Akasha family.

JUSTICE SYSTEM
The arrest “is a big blow to the terror group and criminal gangs which have been forming in Mombasa”, concluded the website.

Then the clincher: “Intelligence shows that Khatri is a relative of Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho”.

The sensational report might have remained buried in the obscure website — until the Jubilee social media brigade launched a coordinated “share-offensive” on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram and such platforms.

Jubilee supporters lapped it all up, heralding it as proof that Mr Joho was an unsavoury character who, indeed, deserved tough treatment.

What clearly did not seem to strike them as odd is that, for a man depicted as a most dangerous international criminal, Mr Khatri was released that same evening for a modest bond of Sh20,000.

Perhaps he was no more dangerous and no more of a flight risk than the regular drunk driver.

Another aspect that many may have missed in their eagerness to see a rude and loud opposition chief silenced was that the so-called Intelligence Briefs is just gutter press.

It is, at best, a briefcase online propaganda outfit of no known abode or contacts, mostly serving the disinformation campaigns of the Jubilee government outside the formal security machinery.

The so-called Strategic Intelligence Service, which runs the site, comes across as particularly lacking in — you guessed right: Intelligence — publishing crude propaganda that no right-thinking person would buy.

Now, this is not supposed to be advocacy for Mr Joho, Mr Khatri or anybody else.

They may have skeletons in their closets, but civilised government deals with miscreants through the formal criminal justice system, not cheap harassment and fake stories.

WHAT A SHAME
Lies must be called out — just like that crude forgery doing the rounds last week of President Kenyatta’s purported ‘O’ Level certificate.

Some lies, however, are particularly dangerous, because in Kenya they have often been used to set the ground for something sinister.

For the record, I have no objection to the government freeing policemen from the service of governors and re-deploying them to critical security duties.

But let it be even-handed, to affect all governors, Cabinet secretaries and other VIPs (Vagabonds in Power, as Fela Kuti called them).

Let those in need of extra security hire their own.

It is criminal that about a quarter of the police officers in Kenya are serving as watchmen, messengers, houseboys, maids and errand boys for our pampered leaders, while the borders leak for want of personnel; terrorists, cattle rustlers and assorted bandits roam free in large swathes of the country; and muggers, carjackers, burglars and dangerous armed criminals operate undisturbed.

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @MachariaGaitho