End of the game: Unmasking Kenya’s poaching underworld

When five poachers attempted to kill a rhino at the Lake Nakuru National Park on the evening of October 5 this year, they did not know the can of worms they were about to open.

 

Their planning had been meticulous; the target would be close to the main exit from the park for easy escape, a man in police uniform would be part of the mission, and a car would be waiting just a few meters outside the park to rush them to safety.

What they had not planned, however, was the shooting of the man in police uniform. And that set off a chain of events that has exposed the intricate, tightly woven poaching network that has troubled the authorities for long.

Ms Carol Mwebia, a game warden at the park, said she was attracted to a commotion near the main gate on the material day. In the company of fellow game wardens, she rushed to the scene, only to be met with the intimidating barrel of a gun.

She was, however, quicker on the trigger, firing three shots from her .45 semi-automatic and injuring the “police officer” on the shoulder. Sources identified the injured suspect only as Eliphas, and that single name has become handy in cracking the knotty underworld that is Kenya’s poaching industry. 

The underworld, however, is not only knotty, but also brutally efficient. Between January and September 2013, for instance, poachers killed 172 elephants and 32 rhinos, according to Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Director William Kiprono, writing in the August-September 2013 issue of Porini , the in-house conservationists’ magazine. 

And between January and July this year, poachers killed 22 rhinos in Kenya, four of them in July alone. The sustained game massacre is estimated to have decimated Kenya’s black rhino population from a high of 20,000 in the 1970s, to 1,037 by the middle of this year, according to KWS spokesperson Paul Muya, speaking to the Reuters news agency in August this year.

In addition to the black rhino, whose horn is highly sought in Asian countries, elephants are also hunted down for their ivory, which is then exported to Far- and Middle-Eastern markets for the manufacture of trinkets and game trophies. 

All this is happening against the backdrop of the outlawing, in 1989, of international trade in ivory after elephant populations in Africa dropped from millions in the mid-20^th century to about 600,000 by the end of the 1980s. That same year, the then Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi led in torching a stockpile of elephant tusks, a move that, though celebrated by conservationists, was derided by skeptics as being a public relations gesture. 

Despite the avalanche of interventions, poachers are still having a ball in Kenya’s game parks and reserves. For instance, this week, as investigators zeroed in on Eliphas in Nakuru, the Interpol issued a warrant of arrest for Mombasa-based Kenyan businessman Feisal Mohammed, who is suspected to be the leader of the East African cell of a global poaching syndicate.

The connection between Eliphas and Mohammed is still remote. What is not in doubt, however, is that a man by the name Eliphas was at the Lake Nakuru National Park on the evening poachers tried to kill a rhino.

A woman, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said she was walking home when she saw a gang of five fleeing the scene in a van, and that “the one in a police uniform” dropped a piece of paper bearing the contacts of a woman.

The woman pointed us to a doctor known to both her and Eliphas at the Nakuru Hospice. The doctor, however, denied treating Eliphas on the evening of October 5, but a document on his desk indicated that, on the same day, a man named Eliphas received “shoulder arthroscopic removal” services at the hospice for Sh2,000.  Arthroscopy is a surgical procedure used to repair or remove damaged tissue on a joint.

He had been rushed there by his accomplices, one of whom is a banker in town, and who said he was the designated driver for “the mission.” The banker, while also requesting anonymity, said he had known Eliphas Marete for about a year, and that Mr Marete, regularly deposited huge sums of money into his account, despite him being a low-ranking police officer.

Poaching syndicates are often complicated mazes with massive tentacular reaches. The involvement of the banker is suspected to be for money-laundering services, said Nakuru-based lawyer Steve Biko Osur.  

 “The syndicate is wider than earlier believed, and it is an indictment of Kenya’s policing and judicial systems.”

Poachers are often camouflaged in police gear; something Mr Osur believes hints at the centrality of law enforcers in poaching networks. He is convinced that the buck in poaching stops at law enforcement. Mr Osur said he had successfully defended a Mr Eliphas Marete in court in a poaching suit, but the police officer denied ever having been arrested.

 “In these cases,” said Mr Osur, “the police are more than willing to frustrate the prosecution of the cases by deliberately failing to provide water-tight evidence, or introducing technicalities to the cases.” 

Such technicalities, added Mr Osur, include holding suspects in custody for more than 24 hours without arraigning them in court, or ensuring the charge sheet reads differently from what is recorded in the Occurrence Book.   

As a result, poachers seem to have infiltrated both the policing and judicial systems, effectively sealing off any avenues that could lead to their conviction.

Mr Marete, when contacted regarding this story, at first even denied that he was a police officer. But after several meetings with him and a lot of coaxing -- during which we also carefully baited him -- he agreed that he was indeed a Police Constable attached to the Bondeni Police Station, Nakuru. However, he denied being part of any poaching syndicate, although he could not provide his alibi between October 5 and 6.

NOTE: This article is the outcome of a mock poaching incident in Nakuru, part of University Journalism Challenge held between 15 and 17 October, 2014 by the European Journalism Centre. Characters in this story, therefore, are fictitious.