Kenyan Dissident Gets Prison Term

After a 19-month trial, a judge on Monday convicted a prominent dissident of attempted robbery and sentenced him to four years in prison and six lashes with a cane.

Koigi wa Wamwere was convicted in connection with what the government said was an attack on a police station in 1993. The London-based human rights group Amnesty International has said the charges were fabricated and the evidence was questionable.

Chief Magistrate William Tuiyot reduced the charges against Wamwere from attempted robbery with violence, which carries a mandatory death sentence, to attempted robbery.

Wamwere, a former member of Parliament, says he is being persecuted for his political beliefs. He had been imprisoned four times earlier and held for long periods without trial.

Two co-defendants, Wamwere’s brother, Charles Kuria Wamwere, and a former army captain, G. G. Njuguna Ngengi, also were found guilty of attempted robbery and sentenced to four years in prison and six lashes with a cane. Wamwere’s brother-in-law, James Ndumo Maigua, was acquitted.

Koigi wa Wamwere recently allied himself with Safina, the opposition group formed by paleontologist Richard Leakey. President Daniel Arap Moi has called Leakey, who is white, a neocolonialist and a racist.