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The government has no budgetary allocation to pay Sh150 million in ‘blood money’ for Stephen Munyakho, a Kenyan convicted in Saudi Arabia for accidentally killing a fellow migrant,Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi told the Senate yesterday.

The government has no budgetary provision “to settle this kind of situation whether in Saudi or any other country”, he said.

“The government is trying to do what it can to see if the matter can be resolved differently and if the family who lost the individual can perhaps climb down from the high level of Sh150 million.”

Munyakho’s family had been presented with the option of paying the family of the deceased man a sum of Sh150 million for compensation, known as blood money in Sharia law. The figure was later

The payment is made to victims or families of the deceased in cases of destruction of property, bodily harm or even murder.

Munyakho is a son of veteran editor Dorothy Kweyu Musopole.

Foreign Affairs and Diaspora Principal Secretary Korir Sing’oei had in May stated that the government had intervened and secured the postponement of Munyakho’s planned execution to allow for further negotiations with the family.

Race against time

Munyakho was to be executed on May 15 if the family failed to raise the required Sh150 million.

The family has raised only Sh14 million and is racing against time to raise the balance of Sh136 million.

“I am deeply grateful to inform [the public] that that authorities in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia have kindly granted our request to postpone the pending execution of Stephen Munyakho to allow further negotiations with both parties,” Sing’oei said then.

Munyakho was convicted in 2011 of killing his fellow migrant Abdul Halim Saleh, a Yemeni national, during an alleged fight. 

Saleh suffered severe injuries and died in hospital. The two are said to have stabbed each other with letter openers, but Saleh managed to take himself to hospital before he died.