Mother’s plea to save son from the gallows

A Kenyan family is racing against time to raise Sh150 million before May 15 to save their kin from the hangman’s noose after he was convicted of murder by a Shariah Court in Saudi Arabia.

Stephen Bertrand Munyakho alias Stevo, a Kenyan citizen, migrated to Saudi Arabia in 1996, then aged 22 after he secured a job. He later obtained formal residence in the gulf state.

In early 2011, the father of three is claimed to have engaged in a fight at his place of work with a fellow migrant Abdul Halim Mujahid Makrad Saleh from Yemen who later succumbed to injuries in a hospital in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh.

As a result, Munyakho was jailed, languishing in several prisons in the Arab country for the last thirteen years after he was convicted of murder. He is currently incarcerated at Shimeisi Prison in Makkah region.

His family says that Munyakho who was also injured during the altercation was initially convicted with manslaughter and handed a five-year jail term on April 9, 2011, in the case that lasted for six months.

Munyakho’s mother, Dorothy Kweyu, defended her son saying he was a quiet man with a composed temperament and easy to get along with.

“The tragedy that befell us over 13 years ago when my firstborn son was jailed in Saudi. Last month he turned 50, but to me, he remains my baby. He is not a criminal and should not have been subjected to the kind of suffering that he is going through,” she said.

Kweyu who is a veteran journalist described Munyakho, the first born of her nine children as a polite, lovely and generous man whom she brought up in the right way.

“This was just an accident. People who live together and it is normal for friends to wrong each other. I have been informed by those in Saudi that Stephen and Mujahid Saleh were friends. I don’t really understand what transpired, to make the two friends who worked and ate together find themselves in a fight,” she added.

Initial sentence

The victim’s family appealed the verdict in a Shariah Court, and in June 2014, the initial sentence was upgraded to the death penalty during the appeal case that lasted two years and eight months.

The family was also given an option of paying Sh400 million as blood money to the victim’s family but it negotiated the amount downwards to Sh150 million to save Munyakho from execution.

Munyakho’s family yesterday launched a campaign dubbed Bring Back Stevo to rally Kenyans to raise money so that he can be released from jail.

It also appealed to President William Ruto to intervene in the matter urging him to apply his authority and influence to help secure the release of Munyakho, or plead for an extension of the May 15 deadline to give the family more time to raise the money.

“Stevo went to work in Saudi Arabia as a professional and it is during his presence there as an employee of a warehousing company that this incident happened. He got involved in a fight with a workmate. They had an argument which turned violent and in the scuffle, one of them grabbed a letter opener. That is the weapon that has led to this problem,” said veteran journalist Joseph Odindo who is chairing the Campaign’s Committee.

He went on: “It turns out that they stabbed each other with that letter opener. They attacked each other with the weapon in turns. Abdul Halim Mujahid Makrad Saleh suffered severe injuries but managed to take himself to hospital where he later succumbed to the injuries.”

Odindo explained that the blood money was a form of compensation to the victim on the condition that once the payments were done, the Shariah court would order his release.

“Saleh’s family appealed the matter and went to Shariah court which then sentenced him to execution. However, on further negotiation with the family, it was accepted that Stephen could be released if his family paid blood money. We have been struggling to raise this money to secure the release of Stephen and save him from execution.

“There have been some efforts in the background by people who sympathise with this case and who also feel for the mother. They have been talking to the family and to negotiate for his release and they have also been exploring whether the terms can be softened,” Odindo explained.

 Kweyu narrated how she has had to chip in the upbringing of her son’s children, one girl and two boys.

“The three children have grown in my hands. I have raised the two boys. One is still with me and is currently pursuing a course in mechanics while the other son is working in a supermarket,” she reminisced.

She emphasised that the family is now bound by the court decision after the Shariah court ruled that the family pays blood money.