Major General Mahmoud Mohamed

[Somali2003]

This Ogaden General defeated and foiled the Kikuyu coup in 1982. He saved former president Arab Moi and restored his power. He was promoted to the Kenya Minister of Defense. Great Leader. He is said to have over $ 100 millions worth of assets.

"But the real shocker came in August 1 1982. Disgruntled Kenya Air Force soldiers, under the command of senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka, staged a coup lasting six hours. The coup plotters were later annihilated by the Kenya Army, under the command of Major-General Mahmoud Mohammed. More than 200 civilians, half of them university students, died. Military casualties were not made public. Ochuka and his accomplices were later court-martialled and hanged"

http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfroma ... 10815.html

[Somali2003]

Where they are, 20 years on
By KAMAU NGOTHO
Major-General Peter Kariuki

He was the Kenya Air Force commander on August 1, 1982. A few weeks later he was arrested and court martialled on charges of failing to prevent and supress a mutiny.

According to evidence adduced before the court, Lt Leslie Mwambura had informed him of the impending coup the night before it happened. Kariuki is said to have casually replied that he already knew about it and proceeded to his farm for a weekend.

On the morning of the coup, the court was told, Kariuki ignored an urgent message to get in touch with the armed forces headquarters, only making his way to Nairobi in the evening long after the coup had been crushed.

The court martial ruled that Kariuki had been negligent. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment. On his release, he settled to a quiet life at his farm in Timau near Nanyuki town.

Brig John Musomba

On the day of the coup, Brig Musomba was commanding officer at 3rd battalion of the Kenya Army in Lanet. His brief was to ensure safety of President Moi, then in Nakuru, and to safely drive him to Nairobi.

Besides dispatching troops to cover President Moi's Kabarak residence, he sent a lorry-load of soldiers to evacuate the President's estranged wife, Lena Moi, from her farmhouse at Kambi-Moi in Koibatek district. When she refused to leave the house, he ordered his men to camp at the residence awaiting further instructions.

Later in the afternoon, Brig Musomba personally fetched President Moi from Kabarak upon signal that the capital city was safe.

Brig Musomba wanted Moi to ride in an armoured car but the President flatly refused and insisted he could only travel in his usual limousine. Later, Musomba was promoted to a Major-General and transfered to Defence headquarters (DoD), where his brief was to preside over court-martials on rebel Air Force soldiers.

He left the armed forces under puzzling circumstances when he was appointed High Commissioner to Pakistan. In a conversation with the Nation two years ago, he said he found diplomatic life boring for one used to life in the barracks and opted for an early retirement.

He is now a rancher in Machakos district and is eyeing a parliamentary seat come the polls.

Raila Odinga, Kanu Secretary General

A son of former Vice-President and latter oppostion leader Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Mr Raila Odinga was a deputy director of the state-owned Kenya Bureau of Standards, a statutory body. Shortly after the coup, he was arrested and charged with treason, alongside journalist Otieno Mak'Onyango and University of Nairobi lecturer Alfred Vincent Otieno.

After several mentions of the case at the High Court, the state withdrew the treason charges and placed the trio in detention without trial. They were suspected of being keenly involved with rebel soldiers.

In 1984, Mr Odinga was briefly brought out of detention when he appeared to testify at the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the activities of former Constitutional Affairs Minister Charles Njonjo. He said that while he knew nothing about the coup, he had information that Mr Njonjo and others were plotting to overthrow the Government on or before the August 1 D-day. He said he had twice recorded statements on his information while at GSU headquarters, but they were torn up by then Police Commissioner Ben Gethi.

He was freed in February 1988, but barely six months later he was detained at height of a crackdown on dissident movements. He was released in June 1989.

A year later, he teamed up with former cabinet ministers Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia, as well as a number of dissident lawyers and academics, in an attempt to take the clamour for multi-party democracy to new heights. In July, he was back in detention after the group called for an unlicenced public rally, the famous Saba Saba.

He was set free in June 1991, to re-join the campaign for a multi-party system, but briefly fled the country fearing that his life was in danger. He returned in time to see the multi-party campaign bear fruit, and in December 1992 was elected MP for Langata on the opposition Ford Kenya ticket.

In 1996, he broke ranks with Ford Kenya and took over leadership of then little known National Development Party of Kenya (NDP). The NDP trailed Kanu and the Democratic Party in the 1997 General Election. After the 1997 polls he embarked on political co-operation with Kanu.

Mr Odinga, who succeeded his late father as the undisputed titan of the Luo community, is now one of the politicians declaring bids for the Kanu presidential nomination in advance of President Moi's retirement this year.

Leonard Mambo Mbotela

One of the most famous broadcasters in Kenya, Mr Mbotela was hauled out of his house early on the mornign of the coup bid by rebel soldiers – they wanted a credible voice to announce to the nation the overthrow of the Moi Government and installation of the People's Redemption Council.

"Serikali ya Kenya imepinduliwa na majeshi. Watu wote wanajulishwa wakae manyumbani mwao na polisi wakae kama raia (The Government has been overthrown by the armed forces. The public are asked to remain indoors and the police to stay like civilians)," were the famous words he uttered over the Voice of Kenya radio.

A few hours later, the tables had turned as loyal soldiers stormed the VOK and routed the rebels. Mr Mambo narrowly escaped death – Gen Mahmoud Mohammed, who led the counter-offensive, recounts how he initially had ordered him shot – and it was his familair voice that was again called on to reassure an anxious nation that all was well.

Mr Mbotela later joined the crew of the Presidential Press Service before returning to the now Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. He retired in the early 1990s but, after a fews years, went back to KBC on consultancy basis. Throughout, he has continued presenting one of Kenya's oldest and most famous radio programme, Je, Huu ni Ungwana?, now in its 35th year.

Moses Wetangula

He was a young city lawyer until 1984 when he offered to represent the coup ring-leader, Snr-Private Hezekiah Ochuka, during his court-martial trial.

Though scantily paying – he got Sh20,000 only to represent the rebel soldier – the protracted and highly sensational case gave Wetangula much publicity and name-recognition.

He was nominated MP in the Seventh Parliament (1992-97), where he often served as temporary Deputy Speaker.

He failed in his attempt to capture the Sirisia parliamentary seat on a Kanu ticket at the 1997 General Election and was consoled with position as chairman of the Electricity Regulatory Board.

He is now busy preparing for another attempt at the Sirisia seat.

Gitobu Imanyara

He was a small-town lawyer practising in Nanyuki and Meru at the time of the coup attempt ... but burst into limelight when he offered to represent rebel Air Force soldiers in the subsequent court martials.

His most sensational case involved Corporal Bramwel Injeni Njeremani, the first soldier to be sentenced to hang. Njeremani's case exposed the glaring negligence by the military intelligence in the countdown to the coup attempt. That came out in a detailed evidence of one prosecution witness, Lt. Lesie Mwambura. Imanyara capitalised on Mwambura's evidence but it was not enough to save his client.

Later, Imanyara shifted to Nairobi and joined the then budding struggle for return to a multi-party system – for which he was briefly detained in 1990. He was in the forefront of formation of the Ford party in 1992. He lost his first parliamentary contest in 1992 but won the Imenti North seat on a Ford Kenya ticket in the 1997 General Election.

Major Nicky Leshan

He was a pilot with the Kenya Air Force. In the afternoon of the fateful Sunday, he and a colleague, Major Joseph Marende, were on duty at Eastleigh Air Base when coup leaders Hezekiah Ochuka and Pancras Okumu drove in and demanded to be flown to Dar es Salaam at gun-point.

Leshan and Marende obliged and used all the skills in the book to avoid radar detection. He safely landed the Air Force Buffalo carrier in Tanzania.

A five-man delegation, led by Major Wilson Boinnet of the Military Intelligence corps, later negotiated the return of the aircraft with the Tanzanian authorities. Boinnet is today the director-general of the National Security Intelligence Service.

Leshan and Marende were recruited in the new airforce constituted after the coup. He later rose through the ranks to become the Airforce Commander at the rank of a Major-General. He retired two years ago and is today a businessman and farmer in Narok.

Ben Gethi

He was the Police Commissioner on the day of the coup attempt. He telephoned President Moi at (Moi's) Kabarak farm to inform him of the uprising. Later, he supervised deployements of the GSU at strategic points in the troubled capital. According to a security source, the fact that Gethi got to the President before the Director of Intelligence and the fact that the GSU suffered no major casualties on the day of the coup made the President suspicious that Gethi may have been in cahoots with the coup plotters, or knew something he never told the Commander-in-Chief.

It is such suspicions, say the source, that led to Gethi's summary dismissal a few weeks after the coup attempt. Gethi was later arrested and put in custody for about six months. He was released to lead a lonely life at his Rosslyn estate, on Limuru Road. He died in June 1994.

Brigadier-general Mahmoud Mohamed,
Deputy Commander, Kenya Army

One of the ackowledged heroes of the counter-offense, Gen Mohamed led the loyal troops that recaptured the Voice of Kenya studios from the rebels. The subsequent broadcast that the government had bene restored played a large part in breaking the backbone of the coup, as rebels started deserting and it become impossible for the mutiny to spread.

Mohamed was promoted to a Major-General and appointed to build a new '82 Air Force from the ashes of the disbanded Kenya Air Force.

In 1986 he was promoted to succeed Gen Jackson Mulinge as armed forces Chief of General Staff, serving until his retirement in 1996. Today he runs his businesses in Nairobi and Garissa.

Oginga Ogego

He was a third year political science student at the University of Nairobi. He was arrested a few days after the coup attempt and charged with misprison of treason (failure to report the coup plot), which carries a life term. The charge was later dropped to sedition. Chief Magistrate Abdul Rauf found him guilty as charged and sentenced him to six years imprisonment.

Ogego appealed before Justice Matthew Muli, who later became Attorney General. However, a remark in court by Ogego that he regreted that the coup did not succeed incensed Justice Muli so much that instead of quashing or reducing the appellant's jail term, he increased it by four years.

Ogego was set free in early 1990s and proceeded to complete his studies at Uganda's Makerere University and later in Sweden.

He was not to be heard of until early this year when Kanu chairman, Daniel arap Moi, appointed him a member of the four-man committee to work on NDP/Kanu merger. The merger was finally consummated on March 18, this year. At the moment, he is an informal strategist in the office of Kanu Secretary General, Raila Odinga. He is also Executive Director of the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation.

http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNa ... rt450.html

[QansaGabeyle]

That is Mohamed Barrow.