Alexander Monson died in police custody
The parents of a young British aristocrat allegedly beaten to death in a Kenyan police cell nine years ago spoke of their relief on Monday after a court ruled that a preliminary case had been established against the officers accused of his murder.
Handing down the most significant ruling yet in a trial that has dragged on for 26 months, a Kenyan judge told the four policemen charged with killing Alexander Monson, son and heir to the 12th Baron Monson, that they would now have to prove they were uninvolved in his death.
For Mr Monson’s mother Hilary, present in court, and her former husband Nicholas, waiting at the end of a telephone in Britain, the ruling was both an emotional and crucial moment in their long and often lonely quest to discover the truth of what happened to their son.
Under Kenyan law, once the prosecution has wrapped up its case, the presiding judge will rule whether a prima facie case has been made.
The police officers claimed the son and heir to the 12th Baron Monson died of a drug overdose
Credit: Katie G. Nelson
Had Justice Erick Ogolla, the presiding judge, ruled that the prosecution had failed to do so, the case would have collapsed. Instead, he made it clear that the four defendants — Naftali Chege, Charles Munyiri, Baraka Bulima and John Pamba — had a case to answer.
“The accused should tell the court what happened since the deceased was arrested in good health,” Justice Ogolla told a court room in the coastal city of Mombasa.
For both Mr Monson’s parents, the judges’ words were a cause for grim satisfaction but not for celebration. After so many delays in the trial, both have learned that every breakthrough in their quest for justice is usually followed by months more frustration.
“It’s certainly a relief,” Lord Monson said. “The case could have been dismissed, which would have been absolutely dreadful.
“I think we are all exhausted — the process has been so enervating — but we have to soldier on; we’ve just got to get there, It is hard on all the family, but for Hilary, who is in locus near where Alexander was killed, it has doubled the pain.”
Hilary Monson has waged a battle with her ex-husband to uncover the truth
Credit: Katie G. Nelson
Present at every hearing in the long inquest into her son’s death and the trial that followed it, the strain yesterday was clear after she stumbled as she rose to her feet at the end of the four-hour ruling.
“I think it was a mixture of anxiety and emotion after trying to catch the key words the judge was saying,” she said. “Nonetheless, it is a very, very significant moment, a step forward, one that has taken a while. Now we have to wait for the verdict.”
Justice Ogolla said that hearings in the trial would resume on 11 May, almost exactly nine years after Mrs Monson travelled hundreds of miles from the Kenyan capital Nairobi to the coastal resort of Diani on hearing of her son’s arrest for alleged cannabis possession — only to find him handcuffed to a hospital bed, dying.
Hours earlier, family friends who had gone to Diani police station expecting to bail out the 28-year-old found him convulsing and unconscious on the floor of the building’s reception and insisted that he be taken to hospital.
The Monsons’ quest to discover what happened to their son was met with endless obfuscation. Police insisted that Alexander Monson, arrested outside a nightclub on suspicion of smoking a joint of cannabis, had died of a drugs overdose.
Alexander Monson timeline
They later explained away bruises to the back of his head and his arm, saying they had been caused by his cellmates carrying his unconscious figure and then dropping him on his head. Bruises to his groin were probably caused by “vigorous oral sex”, they added.
In 2018, however — against all expectations — an inquest ruled that Mr Monson had been killed by deliberately inflicted blunt force trauma and recommended murder charges against the four officers on duty in the police station where he was brought after his arrest.
Although a trial began in January of the following year, it has been beset by delays.
Although there is still no end in sight to the trial, lawyers representing the Monson family said that Justice Ogolla’s ruling had made a guilty verdict much more likely.
“The judge ruled that Alexander’s injuries must have occurred at the police station,” said Alfred Olaba, Lord Monson’s barrister. “The accused now have to come up with a reasonable explanation as to how those injuries happened.
“Given the evidence that has been adduced, short of a miracle, I’m not sure what kind of case they can present to avoid a guilty verdict.”
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