ARMENIAN ‘MERCENARY’ SAGA STIRS UP KENYAN POLITICS
By C. Bryson Hull
Reuters AlertNet, UK
March 16 2006
NAIROBI, March 16 (Reuters) – It was a bizarre twist in Kenya’s
increasingly chaotic political climate: claims that foreign mercenaries
led a police raid on a major media house.
But what began as a minor mystery from one of the most controversial
moments in President Mwai Kibaki’s three-year-old rule has quickly
escalated to convulse local politics and bemuse Kenyans with its
theatrical elements.
The story began with the overnight March 2 raid on the Standard
Group, and reached a crescendo this week with an opposition leader
who first made the mercenary charges trading weighty accusations with
the Armenians he named.
“The whole thing looks orchestrated on both sides. It doesn’t
taste real,” security consultant and former Criminal Investigation
Department officer Ambrose Murunga, told Reuters. “No one has ever
really connected those Armenians to the raid.”
Already reeling from graft scandals and a fall in popularity, Kibaki’s
administration provoked international condemnation when hooded police
with assault rifles struck the KTN television station and its sister
newspaper the Standard.
Security cameras captured images of masked, light-skinned men.
Opposition chief Raila Odinga said that supported his accusation the
government had hired eastern European mercenaries to lead the raid
and kill opposition politicians.
“These two men were in on the raid and the police have given them
Kenya police force certificates,” Odinga said.
Odinga, who wants to run for president in 2007, raised the stakes by
recording two statements with police and producing copies of passports
of two Armenians he said were the guns-for-hire.
Police denied any foreign involvement and are now investigating
his charges.
VIP TREATMENT?
The men Odinga named then stepped out of the shadows to hold a press
conference on Monday to deny the accusations and level their own
against him over business dealings.
The venue of their appearance — the government VIP lounge of Nairobi’s
international airport — raised some eyebrows.
Appearing in dark suits and heavy gold jewelry, the men said they
were Armenian brothers from Dubai who had come to invest in Kenya,
to complement businesses including trading diamonds and gold from
the Democratic Republic of Congo.
One of the men, who identified himself as Artur Margariyan, said they
had to counter Odinga’s allegations to save their reputations.
“The next thing he was going to say was that we had tails and horns,”
Margariyan told Reuters in an interview.
He said it was the press who had led him into the VIP lounge.
But the setting of the conference has fuelled speculation the two
men have powerful government friends, as did their accusations that
Odinga had approached them for money.
Margariyan said the government was not protecting him and until they
assured his safety, he would not record a police statement.
He also alleged Odinga and fellow opposition leader Kalonzo Musyoka
approached him and his brother for 3 billion Kenya shillings ($41.44
million) to finance a vote of no confidence against Kibaki.
Margariyan said they refused to loan money for political purposes,
but gave Odinga $1.5 million in cash – in a plastic bag in a posh
Nairobi hotel suite in December – to sort out a domestic problem.
Odinga called the charges against him and Musyoka “hogwash.” Musyoka,
who recorded a statement with police, has said he met the two briefly
last year but never discussed money.
“These people were being kept hidden by the government and these are
very dangerous criminals,” Odinga told Reuters.
He declined to reveal where he had got their passport copies, saying he
needed to protect a source “who was not from the government as such.”
Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said Kenya was not protecting the
two Armenians. Police are probing all players in the puzzling drama,
he said.
“We are investigating these guys. We think there are a lot of politics
involved in this,” Mutua said.