A South Sudan Embassy official and the brother of controversial South Sudanese minister of Humanitarian Affairs Peter Mayen Majondit are being investigated over suspected child trafficking.
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) investigating the matter on Thursday rescued 14 South Sudanese children from an apartment in Kilimani where they were being held in unclear circumstances.
The children are believed to be the same that Santos Machok Majong -the brother to Peter Mayen, the S. Sudan minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster management –ferried out on an apartment near Rusinga School Nairobi, on March 6, in an embassy vehicle.
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Detectives from the DCI’s Child Protection Unit while acting on a tip-off raided Marcus Garvey apartment in Kilimani where they found the seven girls and seven boys held in rooms 205 and 206 of the said apartment. They were all under the age of 15.
A woman, whose identity was not immediately established, and believed to be the caregiver, was also arrested.
The children were taken to the Kiambu Children Rescue Centre as police launch investigations.
On March 6, around 11:00 pm, a South Sudan embassy vehicle registration number 121CD7K was spotted at Crystal Villas in Muthangari with 14 children before the driver drove off to an unknown destination.
Detectives were informed that Maria Ntalami, a tenant occupying house number 4 at the Crystal Villas near Rusinga School off Gitanga road had the children in her house and were seen taking photographs near the embassy vehicle.
Investigations revealed that the house had been rented by Machok Majong, the minister’s brother.
On interrogation, the landlord told the detectives that the children, mostly girls, were being brought to occupy the house without any caregiver.
However, when the property management and the caretaker were still deliberating on the matter, the embassy vehicle drove off with the children.
A number of foreigners, some of them in the country legally, have been arrested in the last one month for various reasons.
On March 5, two foreigners were arrested in Parklands and Embakasi respectively. Mohammed Nasir Habib-Rahman, an Afghan, was arrested along Westlands Road in Parklands while without any identification documents. He was later handed over to the detectives.
On February 28, Tom Jelani Auteria, an American was arrested in Spring Valley while in possession of narcotic drugs.
Early this month, about 30 Ethiopian nationals detained at Buruburu police station went on a hunger strike protesting the long period they had been detained in custody.
A Nairobi court had ordered that they be detained pending repatriation.
On February 18, a total of 108 Ethiopian nationals were arrested from a safe house in Mugumo, Kiambu County.
Police said the safe house belonged to Hosman Moche, who is suspected to be involved in human trafficking.
Detectives are also trying to establish if the S. Sudan minister is linked to the matter under investigation.
In August last year, the controversial Majondit, who is also a signatory of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS), was accused of repeated domestic violence against his wife who he also stabbed.
In April last year, Majondit was accused of storming a football match in Aweil, Northern Bahr el Ghazal state and demanded that his wife who was playing be withdrawn from the game.
He is alleged to have even shot in the air, an allegation he later denied.
