Kenya not new to high-profile deportations

Rumba maestro Koffi Olomide performs at Koroga Festival in Nairobi on March 13, 2016. He was deported from Kenya in July. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • Staff from a data mining firm enlisted by Nasa to coordinate last year’s campaigns were also slapped with a deportation order.
  • Others who have been deported in the Jubilee reign are Nigerian drug lords Anthony Chinedu and Emmanuel Peter Enobemhe.

Hasty deportation of people the government believes should not be in Kenya did not start on Tuesday with lawyer Miguna Miguna.

In the past, there have been equally fast deportations involving well-known figures.

The 2006 ejection of the controversial Artur Brothers – Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargasyan – who were said to be mercenaries from Armenia, ranks high among the evictions that happened without the blessings of any court.

After the brothers allegedly attacked a customs officer at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), police raided their Runda residence and found a cache of weapons.

The brothers were ejected alongside Arman Damidri and Alexander Tashchi, who were said to be their accomplices.

“The government has declared their continued presence in the country undesirable and ordered their immediate deportation,” a statement from the State said.

KOFFI OLOMIDE
While the two might have been deported before the Jubilee regime came into power, there are at least eight people the Jubilee government has recently shown the door for various reasons.

Congolese Rumba star Koffi Olomide is among them.

He was deported on July 2016 after the emergence of a video where he appeared to kick one of his dancers in a fit of anger at JKIA.

He was arrested on July 22 at around 10pm as he left Citizen TV studios, and at 11.30am the following day he was aboard a Kenya Airways flight to Kinshasa.

NASA STRATEGISTS
Staff from a data mining firm enlisted by Nasa to coordinate last year’s campaigns were also slapped with a deportation order last year.

American John Aristotle Philips and Canadian Andreas Katsouris were deported on the weekend before last year’s August 8 General Election.

Mr Katsouris would later tell a Canadian news outlet that the American and he were given a few minutes to pack their belongings before they were driven to the airport.

“We pick our international campaigns very carefully. Mr Odinga was a candidate we really believed in,” Mr Philips’ spokeswoman Brandi Travis told the Associated Press as she confirmed the deportation.

EURO BOND
Two other foreigners, said to be Ghanaians, were also kicked out in the August 2017 purge against pro-Nasa experts.

There was also a British journalist who was ejected from Kenya while in the middle of an investigation into the government’s dealings on the international sovereign bond floated early in Jubilee’s tenure.

Mr Jerome Starkey, the Africa correspondent for The Times, a British daily newspaper, was held for 24 hours at JKIA on the night of December 16, 2016 then put on a plane to London late the following day.

AMERICAN COUPLE
Mr Starkey told Nation that a few days earlier he had emailed a contact from London to ask him to set up a meeting with a source who had information on the controversial Eurobond.

“I have spoken to many contacts and gone through my notebooks to see what could possibly have triggered it and the reasons that led me to believe it was my investigation into the Eurobond are compelling,” he said.

Besides the journalist, there was Mr Larry Peckham and Ms Denise Huitron, an American couple that fell on the wrong side of the law on April 2017.

CYBERCRIME

The two were arrested because they had contacted a man who was believed to have hacked the Kenya Revenue Authority systems.

They stayed in police custody for 35 days despite having been cleared of cybercrime.

They were deported on the night of April 11, 2017 through a Lufthansa Airlines flight.

Others who have been deported in the Jubilee reign are Nigerian drug lords Anthony Chinedu and Emmanuel Peter Enobemhe.