Prison officer in Wajir attack case not new to controversy

The arrest of prison warden Patrick Safari on allegations of being a sympathiser of the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab terror group is a culmination of long running face-off with authorities.

Mr Safari, who works at the Mandera GK Prison, was reinstated back to service early last year, after a three-year interdiction on accusations of offensive communication.

FALSE CLAIM

In July 2015, the warden was arrested in Samburu where he had just been transferred to, and charged in a Lamu court with misusing a telecommunications gadget.

Mr Safari was accused of posting a false tweet that a senior police officer had died in a landmine attack in Hindi.

His transfer to Samburu from Nairobi was seen as a retribution following an arrest after he was accused of obtaining money from a prospective recruit in the prisons department.

The Lamu court case, which the Nation could not establish its outcome, earned him a three-year interdiction.

This, however, it not deter him from sending the tweets that have been deemed offensive.

WAJIR ATTACK

On Tuesday, he was arrested by the anti-terror police unit from his rural home in Kitui County and was arraigned on Wednesday in Nairobi.

He is accused of posting online photos of officers who were killed in the June 15 terror attack in Wajir. Police claim that the photos he and blogger Robert Alai posted on Twitter were taken by Al-Shabaab militants at the scene of the attack and sent to the duo.

Hours before he was taken into custody, Mr Safari criticised the police for arresting Mr Alai claiming he was not the source of the photos.

“Why should they arrest @RobertAlai ? I'm sure he wasn't the source of the photos. The photos must have originated from (an) angry police officer involved in the operation. They shared them to expose the rot in the service and to express their disappointment” the tweet read.

REDEPLOYMENT

Soon after he was reinstated to prison service and redeployed to Mandera, Mr Safari triggered an online storm with his views on the Wajir attack prompting Nairobi-based lawyer Donald Kipkorir to call for his arrest.

“Why has Kenya security refused to dismiss and disarm Patrick Safari? How can a uniformed police officer, armed with a powerful gun threaten a bloody revolution? Who is protecting Safari from court martial?” Mr Kipkorir posed in a tweet directed to Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i.

During his suspension from prison service, Mr Safari was actively involved in the 2017 political campaigns in Kitui County managing social media accounts for former Kitui senator David Musila.