183 Kenyans banged up abroad

I83 Kenyans are currently languishing in foreign prison with no clue when they will ever see home again.

This is according to the global working figure obtained by the a local daily from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in late December last year.

76 Kenyans are currently holed in China, majority serving death sentence for drug-related cases.

Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the peoples republic of china. It is mostly enforced for murder and drug trafficking, and executions are carried out by lethal injection or shooting.

Malaysia holds 24 Kenyans, Thailand has eight, the entire Middle East region has seven and India at least five inmate.

Uganda tops the list in Africa with 47 Kenyans behind bars in the pearl of Africa. Six Kenyans are detained in Ethiopia while Africa youngest nation, South Sudan currently holds 10 Kenyans in its prison cells facing different chargers.

Among those facing lengthy prison terms in S. Sudan is Ravi Ghaghda, a Business Development manager at the Click Technologies Company who together with three other Kenyans were handed a 72-year jail term.

The three were accused of forgery and money laundering, resulting in the loss of $14 million in President Salva Kiir’s office. They were held at a military detention facility for nine months before they were subjected to five months’ trial and sentenced.

“We have been abandoned by own motherland. We are giving up on ever seeing our loved ones whom injustices have been committed against and are now unjustly in South Sudan prisons. We believe if our ministry had intervened by offering legal aid through our embassy in Juba, they could have undergone a fair trial or even been brought home to be tried for whatever crime they might have committed,” Tejal Ghaghda, the younger sister of Ravi Ghaghda told a local daily.

Ravi family have exploited every means to have him extradited without success, they have appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council to intervene.

What baffles many Kenyans especially the relatives of these Kenyans banged up abroad is why Kenya until today has not pass a law on extradition of Kenyans if diplomatic means has failed, better still why should Kenya extradite foreign nationals held in its prison and yet cannot also facilitate the same for its citizens to be tried at home?

Last week for instance Kenya allowed the extradition request by the United States of two sons of slain drug baron Ibrahim Akasha and two foreign nationals to face drug-trafficking charges in the US.

Baktash Akasha, Ibrahim Akasha, Indian national Vijaygiri Goswami and Pakistani citizen Gulam Hussein are in New York to face charges of trafficking in heroin and other drugs.

A few months back, Kenya agree to extradite five Taiwanese nationals and 35 Chinese citizens who were facing charges of running illegal telecoms operations in the country to China.

Taiwan protest notwithstanding, can’t Kenya have demanded swapping of Kenyan prisoners for the lot?