By Dickens Wasonga.
The family of a 29 -year -old man who died mysteriously while reportedly in the custody of immigration police in the Hague-Netherlands now accuse the Kenyan authorities of turning a blind eye into the incident .
Addressing journalists who converged at his Kisumu residence, the father of the late Franklin Otieno Othieno who died on Sunday last week while allegedly being held by the immigration authorities in the Hague said he had officially written a letter to Kenya’s ministry of foreign affairs through the Permanent Secretary to help in probing the matter but so far he is yet to receive any response.
The father of the deceased said he suspected there could have been a foul play over the death of his first born son who had gone to study pharmacy in the United States of America eight years ago and was due to return home when the family received the shocking news on Monday last week.
Mr. Lucas Othieno said it was curious that the Kenyan authorities were not keen to get involved in investigating circumstances surrounding the death of his son who was through with his studies in June this year at the Houston College in the US.
The family insisted to be told by the authorities in the Netherlands why their son was being held and how he died.
They said information they were receiving from the Dutch authorities in the Hague and that from their Kenyan counterparts were conflicting and has left room for speculation as to what realy took place.
Earlier the authorities in the Netherlands had reportedly gone ahead with plans to fly the body back to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city which is approximately 500 kilometers away from Kisumu where the parents of the deceased reside.
Indeed according to the family,plans were complete and the body was due in Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport by tomorrow,Tuesday but they had to shelve the plan when the family threatened not to travel to Nairobi to collect it.
”If they dare bring the body to Nairobi and not here in Kisumu then they must know where to take it because we will not go to collect it”He said.
Yesterday the deceased’s parents demanded that an independent autopsy be carried out on the body and the procedure be witnessed by a family lawyer or a representative of the Kenyan government so that the cause of death can be established.
”How can they be in a hurry to bring back the body of my son without allowing somebody from his family to witness the autopsy?.This is unacceptable given that the country where my son died is known to champion human rights. Even if he was being held for whatever reason, why do they lock out the family in the whole incident.We need to know why he was being held and what killed him”? Said the father.
But a source from the Kenya’s ministry of foreign affairs said the government was not ready to bear the cost of carrying out another postmortem on the body as demanded by the family insisting that all extra costs in relation to the incident must be met by the family.
The late Othieno who hails from Siaya Alego,the little village known for the roots of the USA president Barak Obama, was reportedly in touch with his girlfriend, also a Kenyan living in the US before he died.
The news of his death was broken to the family on Monday last week by the same girlfriend who is reported to have been rung by the authorities at the Hague but the deceased father disclosed that she had very scanty information regarding the incident that is likely to spark off a bitter international row between the two states.
The Hague is known to be center where those who commit crimes against humanities and other atrocities are tried at the International Criminal Court where even a section of the Kenyan political leaders suspected to have masterminded and financed the post poll chaos in the East African nation are to be tried upon conclusion of investigations by the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo.
ENDS.