British murder suspects recorded songs in Nairobi

The two British citizens who were deported back to the UK to face murder charges this week were popular musicians in the London drill rap scene whose careers skyrocketed with music produced in Nairobi while they were hiding in Kenya after allegedly committing murder.

Monteiro Tariq Kennedy Mangal, 21, who raps under stage name ‘Suspect’, and fellow Londoner Mohamud Siyad Abdihakim, 24, also known as ‘Swavy’, racked up millions of views on YouTube for rapping about a crime they had committed and got away with.

According to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations boss George Kinoti, Mangal was arrested at Mideya apartments in Nairobi. His accomplice Abdihakim was apprehended at Al Dar apartments last Saturday following an extradition request by the UK.

“Metropolitan police, who have been looking for the suspects, believe that one of the two arrested fugitives carried out the actual stabbing, while the other one was driving one of the stolen cars. The two had been hiding in Nairobi’s upmarket Kilimani suburbs while on the run,” said the DCI.

“If you commit a crime be ready to face the law. We will smoke you out,” said Mr Kinoti.

The two suspects, who have since been charged in a court at Westminster, London, are accused of murdering a 16-year-old boy in London before escaping to Nairobi in 2019.

“Alex Smith, who was aged 16, was found with fatal stab wounds in Munster Square, off Euston Road, on 12 August 2019,” said a spokesman of the Metropolitan Police in London.

Although the authorities in Nairobi and London have made it appear like the two suspects were completely hiding under the radar and were only discovered a few months ago, it is very likely that they were not.

From the people we have spoken to who knew them, there are very few people who interacted with Suspect and Swavy who could tell that they were famous rap stars or members of violent criminal gangs and suspected murderers back home.

“You could not even tell that they were foreigners; they looked like rich Somali kids who no one could tell what they did for a living,” one of Suspect’s neighbours at Mideya told the Sunday Nation.

“They were always hanging around in groups attending parties or shooting videos. I honestly don’t know if they were musicians,” said the neighbour when we asked if she knew she had a famous neighbour.

Suspect even had a Kenyan wife called Halima and a son while Swavy lived with his sister and other family members, who are Kenyan Somalis. It is Suspect’s wife and Swavy’s sister who first raised concern about the arrest of their kin when the two rappers suddenly disappeared on January 27.

“He has been refused lawyers. We have not been allowed to see him. They have denied having him. We just want to know if he's alive,” said Halima at the steps of the Milimani Law Courts where they had gone to seek redress.

“We just need proof of life,” she said.

Unknown to many people including journalists, Suspect and Swavy were not only murder suspects but were happily rapping about the crimes they had committed.

Some of their drill rap songs such as ‘money and violence,’ ‘test my temper’ and ‘winning kill’ whose videos are filled with grimy scenes have racked up millions of views on social media, catapulting them to fame.

Apart from threatening their rivals in songs produced while in Kenya, the two rappers also taunted the UK police for not arresting them like in the song ‘dug out,’ where they rapped “They started to hide at night, so we started to glide broad-day when the sun is out.”

Drill — a sub-genre of hip hop defined by its dark, violent and nihilistic lyrical content delivered with heavy bass and shrill beats — originated in the United States before crossing over to the UK.

Its provocative lyrics portraying life in the ghettos have been blamed by the police in the UK for fuelling violence and gang warfare, especially in London.

“Murders and stabbings plaguing London and other cities are directly linked to an ultra-violent new form of music sweeping Britain”, the Sunday Times reported in 2015 when a wave of stabbing started happening in London.

Camden, where Suspect was born 21 years ago, has in recent years emerged as a flash point for UK’s violent crime crisis due to a booming drug trade and the increasingly popular drill rap.

According to the Metropolitan police, both rappers belong to the 71st gang whose members have been behind some of the violence currently being witnessed in the UK. Most of the members have since fled the UK after being accused of the murder of Alex Smith.

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