Who killed my son? Pain of mother of drug baron Yusuf Swaleh Ahmed
Swaleh Yusuf Ahmed at the Mombasa Law Courts on January 24, 2019. He was found dead on March 17, 2024 in Kilifi.
What you need to know:
- According to Mrs Jauria Yusuf Ahmed, armed men who identified themselves as police officers raided her son’s home in Kikambala on March 8, at 8pm.
- The officers, she says, ransacked the house before frogmarching Swaleh who had attended court two days earlier to face charges of trafficking heroin and cocaine worth over Sh300 million.
The mother of slain drug baron Swaleh Yusuf Ahmed, alias Candy Rain or Kandereni, is pointing an accusing finger at police, saying they arrested her son days before he was killed and his body dumped in Kilifi County.
According to Mrs Jauria Yusuf Ahmed, armed men who identified themselves as police officers raided her son’s home in Kikambala on March 8, at 8pm.
The officers, she says, ransacked the house before frogmarching Swaleh who had attended court two days earlier to face charges of trafficking heroin and cocaine worth over Sh300 million.
“Subsequent to the arrest, we visited Kijipwa Police Station, which is the nearest police station, but Swaleh was not there,” Mrs Ahmed says a March 13 application filed at the High Court in Mombasa by her lawyer Jared Magolo.
Desperate, she made the application seeking a judge’s intervention to have her son presented in court so that the legality of his detention could be assessed.
The woman further alleged that officers at the police station confirmed that detectives from the Anti-Narcotics Unit had indicated to their colleagues that they were going to make a raid in Kikambala.
“Swaleh has not been produced before any court since his arrest on March 8,” said Ms Jauria, as the family continued to search for their son who would be found killed and body dumped four days later.
Read: Kandereni: Slippery drug baron seeking to take over Akasha narcotics empire
At that time, the woman explained to the court that the continued detention of her son without trial was against his constitutional rights.
The lock-up, Mrs Ahmed added, had caused her and her family serious emotional distress and wanted her son or his body presented in court.
“I ask the court to direct the person detaining Swaleh to appear before this court and show cause, and at the same time release him forthwith,” she said.
This was not to be.
Four days later, the family was shocked to learn that Swaleh had been killed and his body dumped at Kiruwitu, Kilifi County.
According to police, who remained tight-lipped on the matter for more than 24 hours after the discovery of the body on Sunday, Swaleh suffered a blow to the head.
Officers told the Nation they suspected that Swaleh’s killers, who are yet to be identified, could have killed him elsewhere and dumped his body near his home in the dead of night.
The drug baron’s half-naked remains were discovered by a boda boda operator who alerted residents of Kikambala.
On Monday, Swaleh was laid to rest at Sargoi Cemetery in Mombasa town amid tension and heavy police deployment.
But who was this man Swaleh?
Before his death, Swaleh, who was heaving under the weight of endless court cases over alleged drug trafficking and money laundering, had been profiled by security agencies as one of the main narcotics dealers in the Coast.
He had been described as the man who was eager to take over Ibrahim Akasha's drug empire after his sons, Baktash Akasha and Ibrahim Akasha, were extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges.
They were later sentenced to 25 and 23 years in prison, respectively.
Swaleh, a dark, middle-aged man with a grey beard, had become the new face of drug trafficking on the Coast, as evidenced by the number of drug cases and the value of the substances he was accused of trafficking.
He spent a significant portion of his life shuttling from one court to another to battle numerous drug trafficking charges.
He was a regular guest of the State at Shanzu, Mombasa and Nairobi law courts.
According to the police, the deceased owned an upscale residence in Kikambala where he allegedly stored his drug hauls.
His ability to secure bail whenever he was arraigned allowed him to continue moving freely while awaiting the resolution of his cases.
In almost every case, State prosecutors opposed his release on bail, arguing that Swaleh was a prominent trafficker with a vast network of operations.
But he always walked to his freedom, with courts citing State’s failure to provide evidence as to why he should be held in custody pending trial.
In the months preceding his death, Swaleh was a marked man in the war on drug trafficking and abuse on the Kenyan Coast.
According to court documents and police reports, Swaleh had an extensive network of drug distributors and sellers spanning the entire coastal region, reaching as far as Lamu County.
He had been arrested multiple times by the police and had a history of prison stints, yet he continued to oversee the nefarious operations after beating police and prosecutors at their own games.
Records presented in court indicate that Swaleh initially worked as a matatu driver in Mombasa in the early 1990s before reportedly delving into small-scale drug dealing.
His enterprise later expanded, catching the attention of security agencies at the Coast.
Subsequently, he was arrested and brought to court from time to time for involvement in illegal trade.
In his illegal trade, police say Swaleh worked in collaboration with Masuo Bakari Tajiri, who was found murdered in January 2022 under mysterious circumstances.
Tajiri's badly mutilated body was found in a bush in Thika— a month after he was reported missing on December 3, 2021.
