The young daughter of Agnes Wanjiru has met the British high commissioner in Kenya to ask for justice for her mother, who was murdered in 2012.
Wanjiru, 21, was found dead in the septic tank of a hotel in Nanyuki, a town north of Nairobi, close to a British army base. She had last been seen alive in the presence of a British soldier.
Her daughter, Stacey, 12, has only recently been told that Agnes’s sister, Rose, who has brought her up, is her aunt, not her mother. She was also told about the circumstances of her mother’s death.
At the meeting on Thursday at the consulate in Nairobi, Stacey, her aunt and her cousin pleaded with Neil Wigan, the high commissioner, for justice. They were accompanied by James Mwangi, from the African Centre for Corrective and Preventive Action charity, who is supporting the family.
Wigan, who was the ambassador in Israel until last summer, offered his condolences and said the government was committed to helping Kenyan police in their criminal inquiry. Afterwards, Rose’s daughter, Esther, who acts as the family’s spokeswoman, said: “We wanted to come here to ask for justice for Agnes and that the investigation can be completed into her death.
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“We believe that British soldiers killed her, and that it has taken far too long to bring her murderer, or murderers, to justice for what they have done. We want to urge the British government to do everything they can to make sure this case can be concluded as quickly as possible, because ten years is far too long to wait.”
A joint investigation is being conducted by British military police and Kenyan police. It has involved a number of soldiers from the Duke of Lancaster Regiment being interviewed.
On the night of March 31, 2012, Agnes was with friends at the Lions Court hotel in Nanyuki, where she spent the evening drinking and dancing with British soldiers. She was seen by witnesses walking to a bedroom in the grounds of the hotel with a British soldier. Three months later, her body was discovered in the grounds of the hotel by a groundskeeper, hidden in a septic tank.
In 2019, an inquest in Kenya found that she had been murdered by one or two British soldiers, prompting a new police investigation. The work by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), Kenya’s equivalent of the FBI, is still under way.
The case has created diplomatic problems in the UK’s relationship with Kenya. The UK has a defence agreement to keep an army base in Nanyuki, which is used to train British soldiers. However, Kenyan members of parliament have debated whether the agreement is still appropriate, given the circumstances of the murder.
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A Sunday Times investigation in 2021 spoke to a number of present and former British soldiers who repeatedly identified the same soldier as being her killer. One of those witnesses, a former soldier, said he was shown Agnes’s body by the killer on the night of her murder.
Her alleged killer, known to this newspaper as Soldier X, is living in the south of England. Agnes’s family has also brought a High Court civil action against the Kenyan police and British Army, seeking disclosure of the status of the criminal investigation and extradition of the suspects.
Last week a Kenyan judge granted a 14-day extension for the police and army to provide responses. The Kenyan parliament is also carrying out its own inquiry into the murder and an assessment of the British army base’s “operational integrity”.
The hearings are to be conducted in Nanyuki and Archers Post, where British soldiers have a camp in the countryside, next week.
