Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

A 37-year-old man who had been jailed for life is still languishing in prison, eight months after a Mombasa High Court judge quashed his sentence and ordered for a fresh trial.

Hassan Kafan, who was jailed for robbery with violence, is held in isolation at the Shimo la Tewa Prison to await commencement of the pre-trial. The case cannot proceed because High Court judge Dora Chepkwony has allegedly not typed the proceedings.

Kafan had appealed his life sentence in 2017 on grounds of lack of sufficient evidence to support a “guilty” finding.

He has been behind bars since 2010 after the trial court denied him bond on grounds he was a flight risk.

Justice Chepkwony in her hand-written judgement delivered on May 13 had ordered for the retrial of Kafan after she set aside his life sentence on grounds that the suspect was erroneously tried in the lower court.

Kafan has since written to the Deputy Registrar in charge of Mombasa Law Courts, seeking to have the file traced to enable him to get a copy of the judgement, which will be served on the prison authorities to facilitate his production order for plea taking. 

He is yet to get a reply to his letter.

Get justice

“The judge ordered for a fresh trial, that means the judgement is to be served to the prison authorities. However in this case, the judge left with the file and no judgement has been released to the courts registry.

Therefore, the prison cannot act, I have been through hell; right now I have resigned to my fate. I do not think I will ever get justice,” he said.

The initial charges read that on June 17, 2010 at around 2100hrs at Mtongwe area in Likoni, jointly with others not before court, while armed with dangerous weapons namely knives, robbed Nzomo Muthui of cash Sh3,000 and a Nokia 1200 mobile phone valued at Sh3,000 all valued at Sh6,000 and at or immediately before or after the time of such robbery, used actual violence on Muthui.