Plainclothes police officers arrest demonstrators in Nairobi on June 6, 2023, during protests against the Finance Bill 2023.
For two days, a man who was mistaken for cartoonist Gideon Kibet, alias “Kibet Bull”, lived in a state of terror and trauma, as police officers broke into the home he shares with his family and ransacked different rooms looking for Kibet.
For the first time since the incident on December 23, he spoke exclusively to the Nation and detailed his ordeal.
The Nation will name him Gerald to conceal his identity for security purposes.
“On 23rd December I got home at roughly 8pm and had supper with my family. After sometime we all went to bed. But at 3am, I was woken up by a bang at my gate. It was so impactful that the house was shaking. Thinking that it was a robbery, I wondered who was this bold yet we live in a neighbourhood with security guards,” Gerald says.
His wife, who was lying by his side, asked him what could be happening.
Startled, he ran to their bedroom window and saw several men brandishing guns and powering through his main gate as they approached the second gate. He ran to his phone and called the neighbourhood security to come to his aid.
“Shortly after, the men came through my bedroom door with large guns. They were shiny and black in colour,” Gerald recalls.
“They looked like new weapons. Several guns were pointed right at me. I have never seen anything like that in my life. But something strange happened, the men looked at me keenly and it was as though they had made a mistake because they lowered their weapons. I was still sitting on the bed with my hands up. My wife was screaming for her life.”
The men told Gerald to stand up from the bed, which he did. They then took the mattress, removed it from the bed, and checked underneath it.
“They asked me who I lived with in the house and I said my wife and my children. They ordered me to take them to our children’s bedrooms. When I opened the children’s bedroom door, my son was sitting on the bed shaking. Just as my girls were, they asked my son his name and he answered them. I pleaded with them telling them these are my children.”
The men closed the children’s bedroom door and led Gerald and his wife to the sitting room.
It was there that they saw the full damage to their house, broken windows, and cracked walls, with rubble lying on the floor.
“They said they were police officers and asked me why I did not open the door for them yet they had been calling out to me. I told them that I did not hear anyone calling out to me, just the loud bang of my doors being broken down. They insisted that they had called out to me. I was so upset at their response considering the damage they had done to my house, but out of fear, I did not argue back. After all, I did not know who they were and they had guns,” Gerald states.
The officers noticed a phone on the table and one that Gerald was holding and asked him whose they were. Gerald told them they were his and they told him to give them both telephone numbers.
“As I was talking to one man, another was talking to my wife. She began gasping for breath and he was telling her to breathe in and out. ‘Don’t you see we are not bad people? We have not hurt anyone in the house or damaged your property, the man was saying to my wife. I told her to try and breathe slowly and eventually she calmed down.
She appeared as though she was about to faint from the shock and fear,” states Gerald.
After getting the telephone numbers, the armed men appeared satisfied and began to leave the house.
“They looked at the damage and told me it was my fault because I did not answer them when they called out to me. Then they turned and left. I followed them outside to close the gate but they ordered me back inside telling me they would close it themselves.
Back inside the house, my wife was sitting with my children in the sitting room. We heard the cars the men came in driving off but we sat there until morning, afraid to go back to sleep in case the men came back because we did not know our crime and why they had done this to us,” Geralds says.
Shortly after that, the neighbourhood security guards came to Gerald’s house telling him how they had tried accessing the house but the men who came in three double cabin vehicles blocked them from entering, telling them that the operation being carried out was none of their business.
“Neighbours began streaming in early in the morning to check on us. I left them with my family to report the incident at Njoro Police Station. I also reported it to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers there and they were surprised. They told me that if any of their colleagues are in the area, they must first report that an operation is taking place at the police station. I recorded my statement and left,” Gerald adds.
On December 25, two days after the incident and still confused and on edge over what had happened, Gerald received a phone call that would put his anxiety at ease, while simultaneously raising more questions.
”One of my tenants who lives in the same area and who heard of the incident told me that the men who stormed my house may have been looking for someone else. I asked him who and he said it may have been Kibet, our neighbour. I asked him if it was Kibet Yoko, the cartoonist and he said yes because he had just seen news on the TV that Kibet had been abducted,” Gerald says.
Gerald called his wife to tell her the news that he hoped would help ease her concerns about their safety.
“As much as it was becoming clear that it was a case of mistaken identity, I was surprised that Kibet was the target. He had only been living at my rental complex for the past three months and is a respectful man, we barely interacted but when we did, he would greet me with respect and he would mind his own business.”
His voice is fraught with disbelief at what transpired on the fateful night. Despite the consolation that he and his family were not the targets, their lives have changed since that night.
“My family is traumatised. To date, they still have trouble sleeping because they say that in case the men come back, they do not want to be caught flat-footed. They hate seeing vehicles outside our gate and when my children do, they immediately alert me. I reassure them that all is well despite the fact that I am also traumatised. However, I try not to show them that because I want them to heal.” Gerald says.
Gideon Kibet, alias Gibet Bull, is among the many Kenyans who have vanished and remain unaccounted for.
Currently, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights records show that 82 abduction cases have been recorded since June, with 29 people still missing.
Seven of these cases have been reported in the last two weeks alone, including that of Kibet, Ronny Kiplagat, Steve Kavingo Mbisi, Billy Mwangi, Peter Muteti, Bernard Kavuli, and Kelvin Muthoni.
In June this year, anti-government protests, majorly coordinated by the youth, erupted in response to proposed tax hikes in the Finance Bill 2024, resulting in the death of at least 61 persons as reported by a consortium of several human rights organisations including Amnesty International.
