More than a decade after Agnes Wanjiru, a 21-year-old mother, was killed in Kenya, allegedly by a British soldier, a Kenyan court has issued an arrest warrant for a UK national. If there is an extradition, it would be the first time a serving or former British soldier is sent abroad to face trial for the murder of a civilian – a move her friends would welcome.
On the night she went missing on 31 March 2012, Agnes begged her childhood friends Friend A and Friend B to come out with her.*
Agnes and Friend A were both new mothers, both 21-years-old, both wanting to let off some steam.
Friend B was eager to go out too, and agreed to meet them at the bar at Lions Court Hotel – located in the business district of Nanyuki, a market town in central Kenya, around 124 miles (200km) north of Nairobi.
That evening, Friend B’s mother agreed to watch over Agnes’s five-month-old daughter for a small babysitting fee. With childcare settled, Agnes and Friend A set off, making their first stop at a bar called Sherlock’s.
“There were a lot of muzungu (white) men there,” says Friend A. “I remember some were in plain clothes and some were in army clothes.”
The British Army has a permanent training support base in Nanyuki, and white men, many of them soldiers, were a familiar presence. Locals referred to them as Johnnies, a nickname that carries unsavoury connotations.
“They made me uncomfortable because I’d heard bad things about muzungu men,” Friend A recalls.
“Muzungus don’t treat us Kenyan women well,” adds Friend B. “Johnnies, especially, mistreat us. They disrespect us.”
For young women like Agnes, the risks of engaging with these men were often weighed against the struggle to make ends meet.
“When women are financially desperate, they will do almost anything to survive,” Friend A says. “I don’t believe Agnes was a sex worker though. I never saw her do that. She was very poor.”
