The arrest of six Iranians in the Indian Ocean with methamphetamine valued at Sh8.2 billion has rekindled memories of a similar case over a decade ago – a trial that the State bungled, leading to the acquittal of seven crew members allegedly behind a heroin haul.
In the latest case, Kenya Navy officers allegedly intercepted a dark vessel operating without identification in the Indian Ocean.
The vessel was escorted to Kilindini Port on October 24, where officers, acting on a search warrant obtained from a Mombasa court, discovered 769 packages of crystalline substances weighing 1,035.9kgs, suspected to be methamphetamine.
The case mirrors the arrest of seven foreigners by the Kenya Navy officials at Ras Ukowe in the Indian Ocean in July 2014.
When they were acquitted in May, the court noted several blunders in the prosecution’s case, including the blowing up of the ship against a court order, the handling of the accused persons, alleged confessions and the suspicious death of one of the crew members.
During the earlier trial, senior Navy officials who testified in court said that they had been informed about a vessel by the name Al Noor, which was allegedly carrying narcotics.
When they spotted a suspicious ship, they decided to shadow and “escort” it to Mombasa Port.
According to the military men, the crew members were very cooperative and readily volunteered information to them.
Iranian suspects Jasem Darzadeh Nia, Nadeem Jadgal, Hassan Baloch and Rahim Baksh when they appeared at the Shanzu Law Courts on October 27, 2025. The court sought verification of documents of Mr Abdul Balochi, who an interpreter.
Photo credit: Wachira Mwangi | Nation Media Group
The crew comprised seven Pakistanis, two Indians and one Iranian, and the vessel was registered in Iran, with the cargo stated as cement and the last port of call being Sharjah in the UAE.
A search on the vessel was conducted between August 4 and 7, 2024, as the team offloaded and sifted through some 258 one-tonne bags of cement and other small bags of genuine cargo on the ship’s cargo deck.
The last day of the search marked the turning point, as the team allegedly recovered a “suspicious package”.
After the find, some crew members allegedly made confessions that there were similar bags in the ship’s ballast and the diesel tanks.
Samples taken from the recovered bag, the ballast water and the diesel were taken for analysis.
Eventually, all the water and diesel were pumped out and more suspicious substances recovered. The same was sampled, tested and later emerged to be heroin valued at Sh1.3 billion.
The seven crew members – Yousuf Yaqoob, Yaqoob Ibrahim, Saleem Muhammad, Bhatti Abdul Ghafoor, Bakhsh Moula, Prabhakara Nair Praveen and Pak Abdolghafar – were charged before a Mombasa court and were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.
One of the crew members, Usman Gani, died suspiciously during the search. The incident – together with the blowing up of the ship, in an exercise supervised by President Uhuru Kenyatta – would be among the reasons that led to the acquittal of the accused persons by the High Court in May.
The charges read to the accused persons stated that they trafficked heroin on the cargo deck of the ship Amin Darya, also known as Al Noor.
The charge sheet stated they were found carrying 377.224kgs of creamish granular heroin valued at Sh1.13 billion, 33,200 liquid heroin valued at Sh189 million and 2,400 litres of diesel mixed with heroin valued at Sh1.44 million.
According to the prosecution, the foreigners committed the offences between July 2 and 18, 2014 at Kilindini Port, Mombasa.
Packages of substances weighing 1,035.986 kilograms suspected to be methamphetamine valued at Sh8.2 billion at the Mombasa Port on October 25, 2025.
Photo credit: Pool
The State called a total of 35 witnesses in the trial and, after hearing the evidence and their defence, the court convicted and sentenced them to life imprisonment on March 10, 2023, after a trial spanning close to 10 years.
In the appeal, the accused persons faulted the magistrate for convicting them in proceedings conducted in a language they did not understand.
They argued that the purported translator, who they claimed “masqueraded” and was allowed by the court to participate in the proceedings, did not produce any testimonials, credentials or certification in proficiency and capacity to translate technical judicial proceedings.
They also faulted the magistrate for relying on evidence whose chain of custody could not be ascertained.
The seven said they were arrested, searched and traumatised with complete disregard to their status as foreigners, without a warrant, without the presence of a representative of their foreign mission or embassy staff, and without a legal representative during the search.
Lastly, they raised the issue of the destruction of evidence – in particular, the shelling and blowing up of the vessel – which they said was unlawfully arrested while in international waters.
They said the blowing up of the ship in the full glare of the world while the trial was still underway, on the orders of President Kenyatta, was a clear indication that the case had already been determined.
While the Kenya Navy officers testified that the ship was not flying any flag, the captain stated that the vessel was flying an Iranian flag and that the owner was known as Haji Ibrahim, whom he had met in Iran.
Some of the 1,024 kilogrammes of synthetic drugs seized from six Iranian crew members aboard a vessel. The haul, estimated to be worth Sh8.2 billion, was seized about 650 km off the shore of Mombasa.
Photo credit: Wachira Mwangi | Nation Media Group
The High Court concluded that the ship not having a flag did not immediately translate into it being without nationality.
The court held that the charge as drawn was defective and the elements thereof not proved. Further, there were too many breaches of the law for the appellants to have had a fair trial.
The court said the prosecution did not prove that all the crew members acted with one common intention as required under sections 20 and 21 of the Penal Code.
According to the court, the captain may have been complicit, but it was not proved that all the crew were aware.
The magistrate noted that the package was recovered several days after the search had started, around the fourth or fifth day.
“By then, we had all sorts of people on board this vessel. There were the captains who directed the ship to the anchorage and the escort team, the search unit, the crane operators, the marine inspector sifting through and repackaging the bulky cement with cranes, the investigating officers and then suddenly; voilà – the bag appears! They are on the cargo deck. Not hidden nor camouflaged. It could be sheer luck, but the contradictions in the recovering officers’ evidence raised a definite red flag in the evidence,” said the court.
The court noted that after the recovery of the bag, more recoveries were made, including from the ballast and oil tank.
The court said that during cross-examination, one of the witnesses said it was the captain and the engineer who confessed.
However, the same witness said that when the package was recovered, the captain was on the upper deck attending to the sick crew member, who eventually died.
“Let’s pause a moment; we have a dying and eventually dead crew member, a suspicious recovery and, at the same time, a confession? Can that confession be said to be proper?” posed the court.
According to the court, the confessions were obtained from persons who could not understand the English language.
There was also evidence that several crew members were unwell and most worried after the death of a colleague.
The court said it was unfortunate that the vessel was destroyed before the defence had any chance to cross-examine or point out some of the issues raised in the trial.
The court noted that the defence stated that each of them was hired separately, and they found that the ship had already been loaded.
“The senior investigator should have considered aspects such as where the owner may have loaded the drugs without the crew’s knowledge or involvement. In this case, the captain may have been complicit, but it was not proved that all the crew were aware,” said the court.
The court added: “As earlier noted, the case started with some intelligence, and it appears that someone out there was calling all the shots. That is the only explanation as to why all our rules of procedure were thrown out of the window. I have noted it was not due to want of experience as we had some of our best officers handling the matter.”
This, the court said, culminated in the much-publicised destruction of the vessel by the Executive despite an existing court order.
The court added that the accused persons were elderly foreigners who could barely follow what was going on.
“From all this, the court finds that the charge as drawn was defective and the elements thereof not proved. Further, there were too many breaches of the law that the appellants cannot be said to have had a fair trial. They cannot be described as minor breaches which can be ignored. Accordingly, the appeal succeeds,” said the court. -
