The identity of a British soldier who allegedly stabbed a Kenyan mother to death before dumping her body in septic tank in 2012 is widely known in the army.
Agnes Wanjiru 21, was murdered and put into the septic tank on March 31,2012 while her family searched for her.
By the time her body was found, all the British Army Training Unit Kenya soldiers who had been at the hotel had returned to the UK.
According to The Sunday Times, five soldiers from the unit gave the same name belonging to soldier X.
After a night of partying in 2012, the naked body of Wanjiru, who left behind a five-month-old daughter, was found at the Lions Court Inn hotel in Nanyuki by a worker who noticed a foul smell.
In the investigations done by The Sunday Times, soldiers who took part in the drunken night with local prostitutes said they were shown Wanjiru’s’ body that evening.
Her fingers and toes were missing due to advanced decomposition. She had a 2cm stab wound to her lower right abdomen and a blunt force injury to her chest. Her lungs had collapsed.
A soldier identified as Soldier Y, said: ‘He took me to the tank and lifted it up, and I looked in and I just remember seeing her in there. My heart sank. My mind just went blank. The only thing I could say to him was: ‘I’ll never forgive you for this.”
Soldier Y also accused the army of a cover-up, saying he told ‘the relevant people’ about the alleged killing.
The Sunday Times says Soldier Y recalled how Soldier X burst into the bar where the other soldiers were partying and appeared visibly distressed, saying: ‘Help me, help me…. I’ve killed her’.
“[We] were in the pub and he [Soldier X] come in crying saying, ‘Help me, help me’,” Soldier Y says. “I said, ‘Why, what do you mean?’ [He said] ‘l’ve killed her.’ [I said] ‘What do you mean, you’ve killed her? Show me.’
“And he just stopped crying like that, turned round, I said to the other lads, I said, ‘Come on, come with me [to look].’
“So me and some of the lads went round and he’d done it.”
‘NOT ME’
But when contacted for comment, soldier X denied any involvement in the murder of Wanjiru.
“Honestly, I’m not surprised because there were rumours in my battalion. If you speak to people in my battalion they’ll say that,” he said as reported by The Sunday Times.
“But it’s a rumour. There was a rumour going around for a long time, which actually was borderline bullying. But there’s nothing you can do when you’re in the military. There’s a lot of idiots, but there’s no real truth in it.” He said he did not report this alleged bullying.
When asked whether he could remember being at the hotel that night, he asked the he be allowed to contact his lawyer.
He described many of those he served with as “lads off a council estate”, adding: “Honestly, I think I’m from a different walk of life. Joining the army for me was an eye-opener, I’d never experienced people like that.”
But another soldier from the regiment, soldier Z, claims Soldier X told colleagues he had killed her by accident in a sex game.
“[His story was that] he’d been having sex with her and he’d choked her and she’d died,” Soldier Z said as reported by the Sunday Times.
When asked why he thought no action had been taken against Soldier X, the source said: “In the army, there is a certain code. You keep your mouth shut. There are some unwritten rules. Stuff does get covered up, you protect your own.”
The Foreign Office and British high commission in Nairobi, the directorate of criminal investigations and attorney-general in Kenya and the Lions Court Hotel did not respond to questions.
Police inquiry was opened in 2012 after the discovery of Wanjiru’s body.
They identified nine soldiers who had booked in the hotel that they wanted to question and asked the British Royal Military Police to interview them and take DNA samples. This nine did not include soldiers X and Y, the Sunday Times claims.
Detectives are said to have asked the RMP to put 13 questions to the soldiers, including whether any of them had sex with Wanjiru on the night she disappeared.
The Ministry of Defence said they never received any such request and DNA samples were never provided, causing the inquiry to stall.
Read more on The Sunday Times.
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