Frank Wanyama (right) and Alex Olaba at the Milimani Law Courts on August 16, 2019.
A magistrate has ordered prison authorities to escort a jailed former Kenya Sevens rugby player, Alex Olaba, to the hospital for treatment pending retrial of a gang rape case against him and another on February 9, 2026.
Milimani Law Courts Senior Principal Magistrate Rose Ndombi gave the order for Olaba’s treatment when the case in which he is charged alongside another former rugby player, Frank Wanyama, was mentioned for directions.
Olaba is serving a 6-year jail term for threatening to kill a key witness in a rape case.
When the case came up to fix a hearing date, a defence lawyer informed the magistrate that Olaba is unwell and requires urgent treatment.
The prosecution did not raise any objection to the plea by Olaba for treatment.
“This case will be heard on February 9,2026. In the meantime the prison authorities are hereby directed to escort Olaba to hospital for treatment,” Ms Ndombi ruled.
Rape conviction
Rugby players Alex Mahaga Olaba (left) and Lawrence Frank Wanyama in a Nairobi court where they were charged with rape.
Both Olaba and Wanyama had been convicted and sentenced to serve a 15-year jail term for gang raping a woman identified as K.A., but a High Court Judge, Grace Kariuki, quashed the sentence and set aside the conviction on appeal and ordered a retrial before a different magistrate.
Justice Kariuki, now a Judge of the Court of Appeal, quashed the conviction and sentence on June 30, 2020.
Before the retrial began, Olaba threatened to kill the key witness and was subsequently jailed for six years and another two years for defeating justice.
Olaba has appealed against the sentence.
In his appeal, Olaba is urging the High Court to find his appeal has merit, given that the complainant K.A., was never called to testify against him in court.
“The magistrate erred in law and fact in admitting and relying on a generic victim impact assessment statement, adduced as evidence yet the alleged interviewed victim KA was not part of the proceedings in the subordinate court,” states the convict in his appeal testimony.
Olaba claims he is wholly aggrieved and dissatisfied by the conviction and the sentence imposed by Magistrate Geoffrey Onsarigo on May 24 2023.
The Magistrate convicted him of the offence of threatening to kill a key witness in the rape case against him and conspiracy to defeat justice.
In the appeal, he has faulted the magistrate for misapplying the law while convicting him.
“The trial magistrate erred in law and fact by failing to consider that the alleged victim K.A neither recorded a victim statement nor was she called as a witness before the trial court,” Oduk says in the petition of appeal.
The convict has also faulted the trial magistrate for failing to consider that no specific evidence was adduced in regard to the nature, time, manner and place that the alleged victim would be killed.
Olaba says in the appeal that the trial magistrate erred in law by ignoring and failing to weigh sufficiently the weighty issues raised in his defence statement.
He also faults the court for not judiciously appreciating the inconsistencies and contradictory evidence of the prosecution's witnesses.
Olaba further faults the magistrate for not considering numerous untruths that were told by the prosecution's witnesses.
He further claims the witnesses were cunning, unreliable, evasive, forgetful and contradictory on material aspects.
Olaba and Wanyama are charged with gang raping K.A. in February 2018.
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