Last November, a multi-agency team carrying out a security operation in Baringo County arrested a suspected notorious criminal from Silale village in Tiaty East.
He was believed to be a gang leader behind a series of attacks in banditry-prone counties in the war-tone North Rift region.
Lonyangapat Perinyang, 20, was arrested in Kapedo, along the border of Baringo and Turkana counties while in possession of two AK-47 rifles and 15 rounds of ammunition.
According to police, the suspect who was arrested following a tip-off from locals had been on their radar for over four years and is believed to be involved in several raids in Baringo, Turkana, Samburu, Laikipia, and West Pokot Counties.
Baringo County Commissioner Stephen Kutwa said through intelligence by the multi-agency team, they were able to arrest him at Kapedo.
“The suspect at the time of arrest had two AK-47 rifles and 15 rounds of ammunition and we are still hunting for the other suspects who have been operating with him. We have reports that he is the gang leader of armed criminals from Silale, Paka, and Kapedo in Tiaty,” said Mr Kutwa.
Locals have a number of times accused security officers and the provincial administration of failing to apprehend and prosecute armed criminals despite naming them.
Richard Chepchomei, an elder from Chemoe in Baringo North accused the government of being lenient on bandits, noting that some are arrested but after some time are seen roaming the villages executing the same crimes.
“Most of the suspects staging attacks in the border villages in Baringo North, Baringo South, and Tiaty Sub-Counties are known and their names have been submitted to the provincial administration yet none has been arrested,” said Chepchomei.
Ali Etukan, a local from the porous Kapedo also claimed that several attacks have been staged by criminals amid an ongoing security operation targeting attackers.
“If the exercise to hunt for the attackers was serious enough, why are they still roaming the banditry-prone areas and challenging officers carrying out the exercise?” Posed Etukan.
He raised concern that several disarmament exercises have been mounted in the North Rift over the years but the gun-toting criminals are still attacking people yet they were supposed to be behind bars.
However, several years of searching for the suspect have brought to the fore how tasking it is to arrest an armed criminal in the border villages and prosecute them.
Security officers, administrators, and elders in Baringo County have laid bare how hard it is to track and arrest bandits wreaking havoc in neighboring communities.
Baringo County Police Commander Julius Kiragu told the Nation that despite getting intelligence reports and names of suspects staging attacks and stealing from the neighbouring communities, it is not easy to track them because most of them hide in the far-flung villages where they are not known.
“We may be given the suspects' names by elders or even informers and they stop at that. It is up to you to follow the leads from there…where they live and other details. The challenge here is, that most of them do not stay in their villages because they know they are being sought by the authorities. Once they execute their crimes, they flee to the far-flung areas where it is hard to reach and they are not known as well,” said Mr Kiragu.
“I may have the names but singling them out is not easy unless the informers go an extra mile in giving out more information. The communities are adamant in giving out or divulging information because they think they will be ‘marked’ by the bandits,” added the county police boss.
He said some criminals also use psedonyms crippling efforts to arrest them because one may end up chasing the wrong person.
Bandits, he said, have mobile phones but to conceal their identities, register their lines using other people’s identity cards and some don’t even have IDs altogether.
“You may track them using their mobile phones but it will lead you to the wrong person. They also operate in remote villages and one may flee from Kositei village in Tiaty West to Riong’o in Tiaty East, dozens of kilometres away in the vast area. The inhabitants may not know what kind of a person he is,” said Mr Kiragu.
Chiefs in the notorious areas maintain that arresting criminals is not a walk in the park because they use sophisticated firearms.
Lokis Location Chief Johnston Long'iro said despite the efforts to disarm locals in the porous areas, they are also putting their lives at risk because they are hunting for individuals who are armed to the teeth.
He said most criminals flee the area especially when they get wind of a looming disarmament exercise, paralysing their efforts to track them as some flee to neighbouring counties such as West Pokot, Samburu, Laikipia, and Turkana.
“In most cases, when the bandits get information of a planned security operation to disarm them, they flee the villages and go far away to the neighbouring counties and countries such as Uganda. Tracking such characters is no joke,” said Mr Long’iro.
He told the Nation that sometimes chiefs from the porous areas get the names of suspected criminals but they issue threats of dire consequences if they dare report them to the authorities.
A chief from Kerio Valley who sought anonymity claimed though they sometimes get the names of those behind banditry and livestock thefts, suspects flee to other areas and change their names.
“Most of the armed criminals have no identification cards and they purposely do so to hide from the authorities just in case their crimes are known. The few who have IDs flee to remote areas where they cannot be tracked and they change their names, paralysing efforts to arrest them. Most disappear for several years, change their villages and you will not see them again,” said the chief.
Some of administrators have been attacked by armed raiders in the past and others lost their property while pursuing them.
In 2014, Moses Chongwo, an assistant chief from the Akwichatis sub-location in the porous Silale ward in Tiaty was shot in both legs by armed bandits while pursuing stolen livestock and suffered from multiple fractures on both legs.
The administrator was in the company of three colleagues from the neighbouring Tugen community and was pursuing more than 50 goats stolen from Chelelyo village in Baringo North.
Augustine Lokwang, a security expert from the region said most armed criminals wreaking havoc are not arrested and prosecuted because of influence by politicians and shoddy investigations by the police.
“For a suspect to be charged in court, there must be a watertight case but due to poor investigations, such individuals end up being released. Politics is also to blame because when some of the suspects are arrested, their godfathers, who are politicians, go and bail them out and the case is swept under the carpet,” said Mr Lokwang.
State counsel Joseck Abwajo, however, said when a suspect is arrested and taken to court; the witnesses don’t show up scuttling their prosecution.
“A suspected bandit may be arrested in those war-torn areas and brought to court by the police but they come up with little or no investigation to implicate the person, owing to a myriad of challenges. For the court to be able to process a file and charge someone with a crime, there must be enough evidence because we are guided by the law as such. You must be able to convince the court otherwise,” said Mr Abwajo.
“Police may recover firearms and arrest suspect(s) and come to court for miscellaneous applications asking for some days to complete investigations which are granted. However, after the deadline elapses, they come back with little or no substantial evidence to warrant someone face a charge and sustain conviction because the locals in the affected areas are not willing to testify in court,” he added.
