Reports Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City.

The family of the ringleader of the abortive, but bloody military coup that almost toppled the civilian government of Kenya in 1982 want his body be exhumed from the prison cemetery and handed back to them for proper tribal burial.

Senior Private Hezekiah Rabala Ochuka was tried under the military court martial, fond guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1984 by hangman at the Kamiti maximum Security Prison and buried along with other rebel member of the disbanded Kenya Air-force soldiers who were also found guilty of the same offence.

Kamiti prison is located abut 20 kilometer outside the Kenyan capital, Nairobi and it is the same institution where the revered to hero of the Mau Mau uprising and struggle for independence the late Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi was buried.

Kimathi was captured from the Aberdare Forest by the British forces in 1956 and executed in March 1957. The entire previous attempts authorized by independent government of Kenya to his family to retrieve his body for a heroic reburial have hit the snag.

This is because nobody knew his exact burial cite. Most of the prison wardens who served at the institution and who might have the knowledge of his burial cite have since either died of old or retired and too old and their whereabouts could not be located.

A couple of year ago members of the family of the late hero Kimathi were allowed by the government into the institution for the purpose of to excavating or exhuming his remains in vain. Several sites were point out, but the search ended in total failure.

Giving his testimony before the members of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission [TJRC sitting at the Aga Khan Hal in Kisumu City, the nephew of the executed ex-soldier Mr Robert Onyango Akuro said that a lawyer provide by the government to represent the condemned at the Court Martial trials did no involve the family in the proceedings and matters related to the case.

He told the Commission that the lawyer Moses Wetangula who is now the Ford-Kenya party chairman and until his recent suspension from the cabinet was Kenya’s Minister for foreign Affairs and international Cooperation and the MP for Sirisia constituency in Western province did not contact the family and never shared anything the late ex-soldier had told him.

“The lawyer never contacted the family and has shared anything with the family that the executed soldier had told him. We do not know the reason why the lawyer never bothered to consult and inform us about OIchuka,”he told the commission.

Wetangula had stepped aside from the cabinet to facilitate the investigations relation to massive financial scam involving billions of shilling alleged misappropriated by staff t the Kenyan mission in Tokyo, Japan in connection with the selling of the former Embassy mission building at a price suspected to be below the market value, a deal suspected to have some under hand dealings.

Akuro claimed there was a letter written by Ochuka to the family giving the names of the lawyers he wanted to represent him, but the family was poor and could not afford to raise legal fees. He charged that the late Ochuka was not given the opportunity to choose his own lawyer and Wetangula was chosen by the government.

Onyango told the TJRC that attempt by the family to meet with the retired President Daniel Arap Moi to plead for him was thwarted by security officers and the family became ostracized. “Our family has been abandoned and nobody would associate with us for fear of arbitrary arrests.

Onyango said they have not received any official document f the late Ochuka including his death certificate and other personal records.

The late Prvt Ochuka had an account with the Bank of Baroda and owned a City House in Umoja estate in Nairobi, a tailoring business in Gikomba and owned a motor vehicle. But so far we have not been told anything about these assets and others.” he said, adding that the family would like to know where the body of Prvt Ochuka was buried to undertake traditional Luo ritual burial.

The Commission took statement from those who were detained by the Moi regime under the guise that they were members of the underground “Mwakenya”an outlawed movement who sought for compensation.

Ends