‘Squaddie told comrades he had murdered Kenyan mum’
Defence Secretary backs probe
THE Army has been accused of covering up the alleged murder of a mother by a British soldier while he was training in Kenya.
Agnes Wanjiru’s stabbed body was found in 2012 in a septic tank at a hotel where soldiers had been drinking.
Now Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is backing a police investigation into the murder.
The soldier’s name is said to have been ‘common knowledge’ among troops in the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment for the past nine years after he allegedly told several fellow soldiers that he had killed the 21-year-old prostitute when she went to his room for sex.
One soldier is said to have told senior officers about his comrade’s alleged crime when they returned to base in the town of Nanyuki, near Mount Kenya, but says he was told to ‘shut up.’
Miss Wanjiru’s body was not discovered until two months after the March 2012 killing, by which time the soldiers’ training deployment had ended and they had returned to Britain. She had suffered a stab wound and a blunt force injury to her chest.
The Army is accused of failing to conduct any meaningful investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death, even after a judge presiding over an inquest in Kenya in 2019 concluded that she had been ‘murdered by British soldiers’. Mr Wallace is now said to have grown ‘impatient’ with the pace of investigation and has ‘directed full co-operation’.
It came after The Sunday Times spoke to one soldier based at Nanyuki at the time, who said he had tried to report the alleged confession of his comrade – referred to as Soldier X – but had been dismissed. Using the pseudonym Soldier Y, he said: ‘Everyone knows [what Soldier X did]. How can everybody know, and he is still a free man?’
Kenyan police have now begun a murder inquiry and are being assisted by the Royal Military Police. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said Mr Wallace is ‘working with the military and Kenyan police to ensure their investigation is not impeded’.
However, the lack of any previous thorough military investigation drew criticism yesterday.
Labour’s defence spokesman John Healey said: ‘The details of this young Kenyan woman’s death are dreadful, yet there’s still no action from defence ministers on reports of grave failings by the British military.’
Miss Wanjiru had turned to sex work to provide for her daughter, now ten, when she met up with troops during a drinkfuelled party at the Lions Court Hotel. She was seen leaving the bar with two British soldiers. Soldier X is said to have returned later in a frantic state and told fellow troops he had killed Miss Wanjiru – even showing Soldier Y her body in the septic tank. He is said to have told another soldier she choked during a sex game, but made no mention of stab injuries.
The MoD spokesman said that shortly after Miss Wanjiru’s death, military police detectives carried out ‘initial inquiries’ in Kenya, ‘including providing information about British personnel to the Kenyan police’. He added: ‘No further requests were received at that time.’
The spokesman said the MoD was discussing with Kenyan police ‘what support is needed’ for their new investigation, but did not want to comment further on an ongoing investigation.
‘How is he still a free man?’