How Dutch paedophile suspect was arrested in Nairobi

What you need to know:

  • Suspect arrested by a multi-agency team from the Child Protection Unit and Transnational Organised Crime Unit.

Dutch national Hans Egon Dieter Vriens may have ducked arrest for two years, but the police dragnet finally caught up with him in Kasarani Thursday, where he was arrested for crimes related to sexual assault.

Police say Mr Vriens, 66, defiled three minors aged eight, nine and 10 years in 2016 and then disappeared. For two years, police have vainly attempted to track him down to answer to defilement charges.

But on Thursday, a multi-agency team of detectives from the Child Protection Unit and Transnational Organised Crime Unit swooped down on the suspect in Kasarani and arrested him.

According to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the suspect will be arraigned in court Friday for sexual offences believed to have been committed on different occasions in 2016.

Details from the DCI show that Mr Vriens’s passport number is unknown, and could, therefore, be staying in the country illegally.

In 2002, Vriens was arrested and charged before a Magistrate’s Court in Nairobi after he allegedly sexually assaulted another girl, 14, at Donholm Estate in Nairobi.