Kenyan migrant worker Stephen Munyakho has revealed the harrowing conditions prisoners in Saudi Arabian jails are exposed to.

Munyakho, who was incarcerated in the gulf country for 14 years for murder, said that, except for the good food, which was prepared by an outside catering company, everything else was hellish, characterised by overcrowding and being banned from basking in the sun.

“Apart from the crowding, it is just a normal environment without any activities. You just sit there, you sleep, you wake up, you pray, that’s all you do for the rest of your life until, if it so happens, you are freed,” Munyakho said.

He said the conditions for prisoners on death row were better, noting that the facilities are more spacious, accommodating and the inmates are allowed to engage in recreational activities.   

Munyakho’s ordeal began in 2011, six years after migrating to Saudi, when he was engaged in a fight with a workmate who later died from stab wounds.

He termed the incident an accident, saying the victim, Abdul Halim Mujahid Makrad Saleh, a Yemeni, was a friend and they enjoyed a cordial relationship even outside their work station.

“At that time, we were working in the restaurant under the accounts department, but I was the warehouse manager and he was handling the petty cash. We were very good colleagues and we even related well outside of work,” he said yesterday.

He said the altercation over payment of salary was his first ever fight in his entire life, maintaining that he was more of a peacemaker than a fighter.

“On April 9, 2011, the incident happened. The fight escalated to some stabbings, which were not intentional. The main cause of Abdul Halim’s death was not the stabbing, but the wound. The doctor’s report says he delayed going to hospital, so he lost a lot of blood,” he added. “It was salary-related as he was preventing me from going to collect it, and even used unkind words to dismiss me. He was the one who started the fight, and I lacked patience at that time.”

Seriously bleeding

The altercation happened in the office where they were working. Munyakho said the victim always had a knife, which he used to open cartons with, and even the security team knew he possessed one.

In the process, Munyakho claimed the victim stabbed him on the hand and the thigh and was also rushed to the hospital while seriously bleeding.

“The distance from the accommodation to the hospital was about seven minutes and despite the short distance, I took two pints of glucose at the hospital. The doctor said had I delayed a bit longer, I would not be here today,” he said.

  The police arrested him the same day because they were the ones who took him to hospital.

While in custody, he was first visited by Kenyan embassy officials in Jeddah, who explained to him what had happened. They also acted as the translators for Munyakho and the Saudi authorities while he was in custody.

The case was investigated and he was later produced before a three-judge bench in a Saudi High Court to start his trial.

The judges classified the matter as a case of accidental killing, which attracted a man-slaughter sentence since the culprit had acted in self-defence.

He was slapped with a five-year jail term, a week after the incident happened in 2011, which also had the concurrence of the Supreme Court.

During trial, Munyakho said he was not represented by a lawyer, but he was accompanied by a translator as he did not have a good grasp of Arabic.

As fate would have it, towards the end of the fifth year of his jail term, in 2016, he was summoned to court.

He was handed three fresh sentences which left him confused. “I was confused because initially I had been handed  a five-year sentence, now I was being told I have to pay blood money, and afterwards there was an execution in waiting,” he said.

The widow of Abdul Halim and his brother had been looped in the case and wanted to exercise their rights as per the Islamic law.

Munyakho explained that Islamic law provides private and public rights. To him, the private rights applied when he served the five-year jail term but the family of the deceased were legally entitled to their public rights, which was to seek compensation for the victim in what was referred to as blood money. 

“In Islamic law, there is public and private rights. Public rights override private rights. When the two were brought in, they first declined the monetary offer and instead called for my execution. The initial figure that was required to secure my escape from the hangman’s noose was 10 million Riyals (Sh400 million) but was negotiated downwards to Sh150 million,” he said.

Abdul Halim kin wanted the settlement to be done out of court but the Saudi government insisted that the process had to be done in court.

According to Munyakho, the Saudi authorities delayed the new case since 2016 to give time to the deceased’s children, to come of age to comprehend what was going on.

 Munyakho, 51, returned home on Tuesday after nearly 20 years in Saudi Arabia, out of which 14 were in prison.

Last year, his family kicked off a campaign dubbed Bring Back Stevo in a bid to raise the Sh150 million that was being demanded by the victim’s family.

Muslim World League paid Sh129 million which eventually earned Munyakho his freedom .