Since their sentencing for 25 years and 23 years in jail respectively by the US courts, sons of slain drug baron Ibrahim Akasha, Baktash and Ibrahim are lonely in prisons, having been abandoned by family members, friends and high flying Kenyan lawyers who represented them in local suits.
Even the Kenyan High Commission in America that is supposed to take care of its citizens has not been handy including Kenyans in America. The only time Kenya embassy officials were seen was during the court proceeding, talking notes and filing reports back at home. The officers were mainly from security attaches posted to various embassies abroad.
In their heyday, the Akashas dined and wined with prominent Kenyans including judges, lawyers, civil servants, whom they bribed to frustrate their extradition to the US. But now, they are whiling away time alone in jail. The two have not been visited by any of their family members, friends, or top Kenyans who fear arrest should they step on the US soil for being accomplices in the two brothers’ heinous acts that included drug trafficking and murders.
Ibrahim and Baktash are also serving their lengthy terms in US prisons hit by outbreaks of the Covid-19, with fears they might catch the virus and die. Baktash is incarcerated in a correctional complex in the state of Louisiana where eight prisoners have died from the virus while Ibrahim is housed in a detention centre in the New York City borough of Brooklyn where five inmates tested positive for Covid-19. According to US prison records, Baktash will be released on May 21,2038 while Ibrahim will be let go on September 5, 2036.
The two brothers pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges involving a conspiracy to smuggle heroin and methamphetamines into the United States. They were the leaders of a sophisticated international drug trafficking network based in Kenya, responsible for tonnes of narcotics shipments throughout the world. For over 20 years, they manufactured and distributed drugs, sometimes using violence against those who posed a threat to their enterprise.
When they encountered legal interference, they tried to bribe officials—including judges, prosecutors, and police officers—to avoid extradition to the United States. The only consolation for the brothers came from their mother, Fatma Akasha, who decried their jailing in a foreign land, taking issue with Kenya government officials for abandoning her two sons, whom they used to dine and wine with in their heydays. Besides legal professionals, the brothers also used to fund politicians seeking elective seats, but today none of those who benefited from their funding has ever gone to visit them in prison. It is this betrayal by those they funded that has seen their mother, Fatma, traumatized and losing appetite her only solace being in God.
Her friends have also abandoned her fearing any association with them would see them blacklisted by the US administration. Fatma has been left penniless as she depended on her sons for survival while some of their friends have grabbed the property the family had given them to act as a refuge. The property in the hands of friends, who have refused to surrender to them or give them the proceeds, including multimillion houses and other businesses. The brothers are also bitter with Gulam Hussein, a Pakistan national and Indian Vijaygiri Goswami, for betraying them by agreeing to be prosecution witnesses.
The family was conned Sh5 million by a man posing as a State House official who could help them secure the release of their sons from US prisons. Chris Mwai, who runs a church at Shanzu in Mombasa, was identified by the Akasha family as the mastermind of the congame. Mwai who together with the other suspects is alleged to have been moving around in high-end GK vehicles met at his church Baktash’s wife Najma Juma who gave her Sh50,000 down payment to secure the release of her husband from US jail.
The pastor told her he was highly connected to Uhuru Kenyatta and even called a number, pretending to be speaking to the head of state. Mwai volunteered to link her up with a well-connected person who would help her meet the president. Mwai introduced Najma to a man she said was Stephen Nzioka, alias Steve, based in Nairobi, and after some days, promised that the Akasha brothers would be released on November 28 2018 and that they would arrive in Kenya on December 2, 2018.
Najma eventually gives out Sh5 million in phases, starting with Sh500,000 that was to be allegedly given to State House Comptroller Kinuthia Mbugua to facilitate a meeting with the president. She later gave another Sh500,000 which was to ensure they got the extradition letter after meeting Foreign Affairs cabinet secretary Monica Juma. Mwai got the last bunch of Sh1.5 million to enable him to get the case out of court. But after getting the money, Mwai disappeared into thin air, only to emerge when he was charged in court.
Also said to have abandoned the Akashas is flamboyant city lawyer who represented them in several suits in Kenya. The lawyer fears flying to the US over the possible arrest. The brothers confessed to the US authorities of bribing officials in Kenya, Tanzania and other countries to ensure their drugs moved across borders without scrutiny. During court proceedings in the US, Baktash and Ibrahim are said to have named persons in the judiciary and government as part of the Akasha’s drug empire. Among them were a prominent city lawyer, a former senior official in the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, some judges and government officials.
More worrying to the Akasha family is that the two brothers were linked to the al Shabaab, the Somali-based terror organization. From their confessions, the brothers admitted they bought guns and grenades from Somalia which were then used to intimidate and kill rival gangs. The confessions were corroborated by the Goswami, their trusted accomplice turned prosecution witness, who gave accounts of how Ibrahim made trips to the Kenya-Somalia border to buy weapons. The brothers would show Goswami the stockpile machine guns and grenades hidden in Baktash’s home in Mombasa. It is the fear that the brothers could have revealed the identities of other family members, top politicians and lawyers about their dealings with the terror group that stop them from visiting them in jail for fear of arrest.
Their father was in 2000 gunned down while walking hand-in-hand with his another of his wife by a gunman on a motorbike. The two had just stepped into Bloedstraat (Blood Street), in one of Amsterdam’s red-light districts, when the hitman whipped out an automatic pistol and fired into Akasha repeatedly. The bullets ripped through his face, tore his heart and abdomen. He slumped to the ground, dead. In 2002, Kamaldin Akasha while checking on one of his many businesses, the ZamZam Petrol Station, in Makupa, Mombasa, was gunned down at a time he was in a tiff with his brothers. Less than one hour after the shooting, Baktash and Hassan went to the site where they blamed their other brother, Tinta, for Kamaldin’s murder.
Three years later, in 2005, Baktash told a court in Nairobi that Kamaldin had been killed in a vicious family feud over a hashish payment he had cut everyone else from. Kamaldin’s death was the second in the prominent Akasha clan, the first being that of its founding godfather, Ibrahim Akasha, two years before. And now there are claims the late Kamaldin’s family celebrated the jailing of the two brothers, saying they were behind his death. There are claims the wives of the jailed brothers are transferring some of the assets that have not been seized by the Kenyan authorities, to their accounts, before they file for divorce on the strength of desertion. They are being helped to execute the transfers by government officials and lawyers.
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